WASHINGTON, June 26: President Pervez Musharraf has urged the United States to help resolve issues like Kashmir and Palestine because they are the root causes of terrorism.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of Pakistan’s new Chancery in Washington on Wednesday evening, the President said that after 9-11, the world had gone through a major strategic change.
The focus had shifted from Europe to the Middle East and South Asia, said the president while urging US policymakers to pay more attention to resolving conflicts like Palestine and Kashmir.
“If a Middle East and a South Asia peace process can develop credibility, the very negative Muslim perceptions arising from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will become much less so,” said the president in an earlier speech.
The United States, he said, needed to deal with Muslim grievances around the world, which were the root causes of political disputes. Resolving these disputes, he said, was the “other half” of Washington’s “war on terrorism.”
President Musharraf, now on the third day of his visit to Washington, also expressed doubts about the wisdom of the US approach to the problem of terrorism.
He said: “There is a perception that symptoms rather than root causes of terror and extremism are being addressed, and that unjust situations in which Muslim peoples are victims of state terror are being ignored.”
But he also urged Muslim states to examine their own societies and choose enlightened moderation over extremism.
He told a large gathering of Pakistan-Americans at the new chancery that in Pakistan, “we need to build our society on the visions of the founding fathers like the Quaid and Allama Iqbal.”
“They envisioned a prosperous and progressive Pakistan with religious freedom for all where there’s no sectarianism, no terrorism.”
President Musharraf, who saw President Bush at the presidential retreat at Camp David on Tuesday, complained about US domestic policies which had forced many Pakistani immigrants to leave.
After the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States which Washington blames on Al-Qaeda network, the Bush administration introduced a requirement that Pakistanis register with the authorities.
“It (the Pakistani community) has become the target of...suspicions and xenophobia also. Reports of arbitrary arrests, detentions, crude interrogations, mistreatment and deportation have been brought to my notice,” Mr Musharraf said.
“Pakistanis who have built successful family lives over years of honest work are now being compelled by circumstances to leave the United States at a devastating personal and family cost...The United States owes it to itself to deal fairly with all its ethnic communities, including Pakistanis,” he added.
After inaugurating the new chancery, the president announced that the old building would not be sold and instead it would be turned into a cultural centre, named after the Father of the Nation.
The inaugural ceremony also drew high-powered guests from the Bush administration including Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney-General John Ashcroft, Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca, US Ambassador to Pakistan Nancy Powell, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky and Director of USAID Andrew Natsios.
The new building has been built at a cost of about $17 million and combines Mogul and modern architecture.
