LONDON: President Asif Ali Zardari said here on Friday that Pakistan was determined not to let extremists use its territory as a launching pad for attacks.

The president took issue with the accusation that most of the terror plots unleashed against the world originated in Pakistan, but acknowledged that many ‘passed through’ his country.

‘We are determined not to allow anyone to use our territory against a third country,’ he said in an address at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Mr Zardari said Pakistan was fighting the ‘mindset’ which led to the planning of attacks against western forces in Afghanistan and to the attack which killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Dec 2007.

‘All I can say is that we are doing what we can. It is not something that can be done overnight,’ he said.

But the civilian government, by getting the government of former president Pervez Musharraf removed, had ‘taken the initiative out of the terrorists’ hands’, he claimed.

He urged the West to do more to support his government to fight the militants.

‘We urge the world to provide us with law-enforcement and counter-terrorism capabilities,’ said Mr Zardari, whose son Bilawal-Zardari Bhutto, a student at Oxford University, watched his father from the front row.

‘We expect our friends and allies to make a correct assessment of the challenges we face and to help us.’

The president said that after seeing his wife pay ‘the ultimate price’ to establish democracy in Pakistan, he would do everything in his power to ensure democracy took root in the country.

‘We have not come this far and at this price to fail,’ he said.

In a sign of the opposition he faces, about 200 demonstrators protested outside the building where the speech was held. A banner read: ‘Remove Zardari to save Pakistan.’

President Zardari said that extremists and militants had been created decades ago under a policy to employ religious fanaticism for the achievement of certain strategic objectives.

‘Militants and militancy have not been created in a vacuum. They have been the product of a deliberate policy to fight a rival ideology.’

He alleged that the free world had adopted a novel strategy that was based on exploitation of religion to motivate Muslims around the world to wage ‘jihad’.

After the retreat of Soviet forces, Afghanistan was abandoned by the world and left at the mercy of warlords and jihadi leaders and no thought was given to its stability, the president bemoaned.

He said that Pakistan had paid the heaviest price in the Afghan war because it ended up with over 2.5 million drug addicts, stunted economic activities and millions of Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan.

The situation, he added, had further compounded when the international community provided material and moral support to dictators in Pakistan.

‘The dictatorship in Pakistan has been running with the hare and hunting with the hound and played hide and seek with militants for its own political survival. Years of dancing with the dictator have encouraged the crisis of today.’

The president said that although Pakistan was facing enormous challenges in the fight against terrorism, it was trying to overcome them.

Democracy in Pakistan had given political ownership to the war against militants and parliament, state institutions and the entire nation were united against terrorists.

‘We are determined to fight and we know how to fight.’

The president said that the real challenge ahead was ‘to make democracy sustainable, indeed irreversible’.

He said that although some difficult decisions had been taken to stabilise the economy, Pakistan needed greater support to overcome the crisis.

‘It is important that Pakistan is allowed market access to the European Union. We need trade, and not aid,’ he stressed.

Mr Zardari said Pakistan was pursuing a conscious policy of building cooperative relationships with Afghanistan and India. ‘We believe that regional dialogue and cooperation is the way forward.’

After the Mumbai attacks Pakistan had bilateral engagements at leadership level. He stressed the need for reviving the composite dialogue.

Pakistan, he said, believed that meaningful progress towards resolution of the Kashmir dispute was necessary for durable peace and stability in South Asia.

‘Non-state actors and supporters of dictatorship have vested interest in fanning conflict in the region. ‘They (militants) do not want change in Pakistan to take root.’

He stressed the need for turning the Friends of Pakistan group into ‘a truly successful enterprise’.—Agencies