The Bush administration threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the Stone Age” if it didn’t help in the US-led war on terror, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf revealed in an interview this week.
General Musharraf told CBS television’s “60 Minutes” that the threat was delivered after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States by then Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage to Pakistan’s intelligence director.
In the interview, which will air on Sunday evening in the US, General Musharraf said, “The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age’."
“I think it was a very rude remark,” General Musharraf said, adding: “One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that’s what I did.”
According to CBS, Mr Armitage disputed the language recalled by General Musharraf but didn’t deny that his message was strong.
On Wednesday, President George W. Bush said he would order US troops into Pakistan to hunt Osama bin Laden if he had actionable intelligence that the Al-Qaida leader was
hiding there.
General Musharraf said this message was delivered along with demands that he turn over border posts and bases in Pakistan for the US military to use in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
He termed “ludicrous” demands by the Americans that he suppress domestic demonstration of support for terrorism against the US. “If somebody’s expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views,” General Musharraf said.
Pakistan is now considered a valuable ally in the US-led war on terrorism, but administration officials and analysts have increasingly questioned its commitment.
Scott Atran, an expert on Islamic terrorism who teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and at the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, says Pakistan was never serious about the war on terror.
“They go into Waziristan whenever the United States applies pressure. They get beaten up by the tribesmen and then they come back. That has just got all the mid-level officers angry,” Mr Atran told The Tribune. “They are not going to do anything to catch Osama bin Laden. Of course, opinion in Pakistan, like elsewhere, is radicalised against the United States.”
That is a contention disputed by Bush administration spokespersons.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said yesterday the US “very much appreciates the efforts that the Pakistani government is making to combat terrorism.”
“They’re a strong partner with us in it,” he added.
In the CBS interview, General Musharraf also discussed his embarrassment at being confronted by an American official about leaks of nuclear secrets by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
The Pakistani President says he was confronted by then CIA Director George Tenet at the United Nations in 2003 with proof of the leaks.
“(Tenet) took his briefcase out, passed me some papers. It was a centrifuge design with all its numbers and signatures of Pakistan. It was the most embarrassing moment,” General Musharraf said.
He said it was then that he learnt that Dr Khan had passed on not only blueprints, but centrifuges as well to Iran and North Korea “(Khan) gave them centrifuge designs. He gave them centrifuge parts. He gave them centrifuges,” he said.
General Musharraf denied anyone in his government or the military knew about the proliferation before it was revealed. “First of all ... these centrifuges, or their parts, these are not huge elements. They can be put in your car and moved,” he said. “(The shipments) were not done once ... They must have been transported many times.”
In video (
