September 12, 2003	Friday	Rajab 14, 1424

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LONDON, Sept 11: President Pervez Musharraf has said he takes strong exception to Al Qaeda’s deputy leader purportedly calling him a traitor.

President Musharraf was speaking to the BBC on the second anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks.

He was responding to a tape, purportedly from Al Qaeda, in which the man said to be Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, denounced President Musharraf as a “traitor” and called on Pakistanis to overthrow him.

President Musharraf said he believed relations between Muslims and the West had worsened since the attacks in New York and Washington.

Asked whether he thought Osama bin Laden was alive, President Musharraf said he thought Osama was probably somewhere along the Afghanistan- Pakistan border.

He said Pakistani authorities were doing their best to catch the Al Qaeda leader and his supporters.

President Musharraf said that Islam and the West needed to work to bridge the differences which had led to the 2001 attacks.

Answering questions from listeners and web users, he told the BBC’s Talking Point programme that Islam had to decide between militancy and emancipation.

The course it should adopt, he said, was one of “enlightened moderation.”

For its part, the West, he said, needed to help resolve disputes involving Muslims so that justice was seen to be done.

“Afghanistan alone is not the issue. The issue is Iraq also now and the Palestinian issue, where on the television you see a tussle between David and Goliath, where tanks and guns are being faced by stone-throwing individuals.”

The West, he said, should also help promote education and poverty alleviation in the Muslim world, in order to address issues at the root of the divide between the two communities.