ISLAMABAD, Aug 4: President Gen Pervez Musharraf has vowed to sustain Pakistan’s campaign against extremism and called for coordinated international efforts to stamp out terrorism affecting the entire world.

He told BBC’s programme Asia Today that Pakistan would go ahead with its campaign against extremism to rid the society of the malaise. “The campaign has to be sustained and has a number of facets. It is not only expulsion of foreign students (of seminaries). It has a number of directions to work on and that is what we are doing,” he said in the interview aired on Thursday.

Rejecting misperceptions regarding Pakistan’s role vis-à-vis extremism elsewhere in the world, he said Pakistan, being a strong country of 150 million and having a key strategic location, would go ahead confidently. President Musharraf said Pakistan was a nuclear power, a pivotal member of the Muslim world and located at the heart of the region.

“We are a key player in this region. We are at the centre of trade and energy crossroads in this region comprising Central Asia, South Asia, Middle East and western parts of China. Interaction between them is not possible without Pakistan,” he said. Pakistanis should be confident about themselves, he said.

Stressing the importance of a balanced approach in the counter-terror drive, the president said he had been saying that in the fight against terrorism, ‘the coalition must encourage each other, coordinate efforts and cooperate with each other.’

“That is a better course of action rather than hurling blames on each other, which is counterproductive,” he said. Pakistan was militarily and forcefully fighting terrorists to eliminate them from the country, he said referring to the country’s actions against terror operatives, including Al-Qaeda and sectarian terrorists.

The president said extremists belong to banned organization and had rigid views, which they wanted to impose on others. “They launch hate campaigns in Pakistan and spread militancy and anger in the society,” he said.

“That is what we need to address,” he added.

President Musharraf said Pakistan’s actions had broken the horizontal and vertical command and communication linkages of Al-Qaeda and it no more existed as a homogeneous body. —-APP