November 11, 2001	Sunday	Shaba’an 24, 1422

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NEW YORK, Nov 10: President Pervez Musharraf said here on Friday that he would seek concrete “gestures” from the United States, including release of F-16 fighters to demonstrate its appreciation of Pakistan support in the US campaign against terrorism.

In an interview with the New York Times, he said “visible gestures” of gratitude from the United States would help blunt public criticism of his decision to ally his country strongly with Washington.

He placed special emphasis on the F-16’s, because their arrival would be the most visible sign that the United States was restoring Pakistan to the stature of a genuine ally.

The Times said that Gen Musharraf was not reticent in voicing his grievance with this treatment. Saying that “Pakistan certainly desires a long-standing and sustainable relationship with the United States,” he said that “trust has to be built.”

When asked whose fault it was, he said, “As a Pakistani, I have to say the fault lies with the United States.” Gen Musharraf said there was a widespread sense that Washington abandoned Pakistan.

“The main issue is we were part of a coalition,” he said. “We fought a war together and evicted the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.” The gestures that would reverse these wrongs, he said, should include major debt relief, military assistance, and more understanding for the sensitivity of the Pakistani public on the issue of its nuclear weapons.

“The opinion of the people of Pakistan has to be moulded, and it can be done through gestures,” he told the paper.

Gen Musharraf said he could not predict how long the bombing campaign could continue before the opposition within Pakistan became a threat to his government. He said he felt the intensity of demonstrations was actually diminishing.

Asked whether he felt slighted by Washington and by the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, he hesitated and said: “Well, sometimes, yes.”

He said this was understandable because he was a military man who had seized power.

The times said that the general spoke as reports came that Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan had fallen to the Northern Alliance.

He commended the victory and said he had no reservations if the American-led coalition decided to set up a forward air base at the airfield near the town.

However, Gen Musharraf said that he was worried that the military victory had come when there still no broad-based coalition in the making to replace the Taliban if their grip on power dissolves. That problem would become more acute, he suggested, if and when the Northern Alliance began moving into Pakhtoon territory, where the Taliban have their strength, and specially into the capital, Kabul. Mazar-i-Sharif population is predominantly Uzbek.

“I’m worried that Kabul should not be militarized because of the atrocities committed in the city,” he said, alluding to the last time the Northern Alliance was in control of the city in 1996.

Gen Musharraf acknowledged that Pakistan bore a major responsibility in the efforts to forge a military alternative to the Taliban, but that this was still a work in progress.

He said Afghans had been meeting in Islamabad and Peshawar to try to find some formula for a broad-based ethnic administration, the paper said.

“There’s no alternative on the Pakhtoon side,” he said, referring to the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan.