Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, determined to see a “final resolution” of the Kashmir issue, has suggested an “out-of-the-box” solution to the bilateral dispute.

In his autobiography, “In the Line of Fire,” General Musharraf says, “the idea that I have evolved – which ought to satisfy Pakistan, India and the Kashmiris – involves a partial stepping back by all.”

The idea has four elements. “First, identify the geographic regions of Kashmir that need resolution. At present the Pakistani part is divided into two regions — Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir. The Indian part is divided into three regions — Jammu, Srinagar, and Ladakh. Are all these on the table for discussion, or are there ethnic, political, and strategic considerations dictating some give and take?”

The second, “demilitarize the identified region or regions and curb all militant aspects of the struggle for freedom. This will give comfort to the Kashmiris, who are fed up with the fighting and killing on both sides.”

The third, “introduce self-governance or self-rule in the identified region or regions. Let the Kashmiris have the satisfaction of running their own affairs without having an international character and remaining short of independence.”

And fourth, and which General Musharraf believes is most important, “have a joint management mechanism with a membership consisting of Pakistanis, Indians and Kashmiris overseeing self-governance and dealing with residual subjects common to all identified regions and those subjects that are beyond the scope of self-governance.”

“There is no military solution to our problems. The way forward is through diplomacy,” he writes. “As early as 2001, I believed the time had come to turn over a new leaf.”

General Musharraf is critical of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee while writing about the failed Agra Summit of July 2001. “There is the man and there is the moment. When the man and moment meet history is made. Vajpayee failed to grasp the moment and lost his moment in history,” he says.

He says he has said repeatedly that the time for conflict management has passed and the time for conflict resolution has come —“and come urgently, because such moments do not occur often or last long.”

But the Indians, he says, “want to move quickly on CBMs while only crawling on conflict resolution.”

General Musharraf writes that the “initial signs of flexibility” that he sensed in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seem to be “withering away.”

“I feel that if a leader is to break away from hackneyed ideas and frozen positions, he has to be bold. He has to dominate the establishment, rather than letting it dictate to him,” he says, adding, “I am still waiting for Manmohan Singh’s ‘outside the box’ solution.” 

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf had “war-gamed” the United States as an adversary to determine whether his country could afford not to join the USA-led war on terrorism.

“There would be a violent and angry reaction if we didn't support the United States,” he writes in his autobiography, “In the Line of Fire.” “Thus the question was: if we do not join them, can we confront them and withstand the onslaught? The answer was no, we could not, on three counts.”

He says Pakistan’s military forces would be destroyed in a conflict with the USA, it did not have the capacity to sustain its economy in the face of an attack; and it lacked the “homogeneity to galvanise the entire nation into an active confrontation.”

He notes that India had offered its bases to the United States. “If we did not join the United States, it would accept India’s offer. What would happen then?

India would gain a golden opportunity with regard to Kashmir. The Indians might be tempted to undertake a limited offensive there; or, more likely, they would work with the United States and the United Nations to turn the present situation into a permanent status quo,” he writes.

General Musharraf says it is no secret that the United States has never been comfortable with a Muslim country acquiring nuclear weapons, and the Americans undoubtedly would have taken the opportunity of an invasion to destroy such weapons.

“The ultimate question that confronted me was whether it was in our national interest to destroy ourselves for the Taliban. Were they worth committing suicide over? The answer was a resounding no,” he writes.

In his book, General Musharraf says the then Deputy Secretary of state Richard Armitage threatened the former Inter-Services Intelligence chief in September of 2001 that the USA would bomb Pakistan if it did not ally with the USA in the war on terrorism.

General Musharraf notes that the then Secretary of State Colin Powell was “quite candid, in a phone call the next morning after the September 11 attacks.”

“You are either with us or against us,” Mr Powell told General Musharraf. “I took this as a blatant ultimatum,” the Pakistani President says.

Recalling his conversation with the ISI Director-General, who was in Washington the day the USA was attacked, General Musharraf writes, “In what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made, Armitage added to what Colin Powell had said to me and told the Director-General not only that we had to decide whether we were with America or with the terrorists, but that if we chose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age.”

“This was a shockingly barefaced threat, but it was obvious that the USA had decided to hit back, and hit back hard,” General Musharraf says.

Mr Armitage has denied making the threat. At a press conference with President George W. Bush at the White House, General Musharraf had ducked a question on whether he had joined the USA effort as a result of the USA threats.

In his memoir, General Musharraf says Mr Armitage’s “undiplomatic language, regrettable as it was, had nothing to do with my decision” to side with the USA.

He notes he felt very frustrated by Mr Armitage’s remark. “It goes against the very grain of a soldier not to be able to tell anyone giving him an ultimatum to go forth and multiply, or words to that effect. I have to say, though, that later I found Armitage to be a wonderful person and a good friend of Pakistan.”

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf admits he is still “struggling” to convince the West that Pakistan is more democratic today than it ever was in the past.

The candid confession comes in General Musharraf ’s memoir “In the Line of Fire.” He concedes it is ironical that for Pakistan to become more democratic “it needed me in uniform.”

General Musharraf came to power in what he terms a "countercoup” in October 1999. The “coup,” he explains, was when the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dismissed him as the army chief while he was midair.

“I ardently believe that no country can progress without democracy, but democracy has to be tailored in accordance with each nation’s peculiar environment,” General Musharraf says.

He notes he was “quite serious” when he announced that he would remove his “army chief’s hat by December 31, 2004.”

“But events that soon began to unfold started putting doubts in my mind,” he adds. He cites the war against terror in South and North Waziristan and that Pakistan in general and disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in particular came into the international limelight on the sensitive issue of nuclear proliferation, which, he says, needed the most careful handling.

The India-Pakistan peace process also needed to be “taken forward with great sensitivity.”

“Whether anyone liked it or not, circumstances had vested this command in me. In the changed environment, I thought that removing my uniform would dilute my authority and command at a time when both were required most,” General Musharraf says. “Therefore, much against my habit and character, I decided to go against my word. I decided not to give up my uniform.”

He says his ascendance to power may be the only instance in history of a military takeover without the cover of martial law.

General Musharraf admits he was initially “quite overawed” by what he had gotten into after the “countercoup.”

On May 12, 2000, Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled that General Musharraf hold elections in three years. “With hindsight, I realised that I needed more time to fulfill my agenda, though at that point I thought that three years were adequate,” he says.