ISLAMABAD, Feb 1: Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan, director-general of ISPR, revealed on Wednesday that the people who carried out suicide attacks on President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s motorcade in Rawalpindi in 2003 had used “the platform of the freedom struggle in Kashmir for their political motives.”

He was answering questions at a seminar on ‘Political violence and terrorism in South Asia’.

“People fighting in Kashmir are neither jihadis nor terrorists: they are freedom fighters, largely indigenous.” Pakistan supported this freedom struggle by diplomatic means, he said.

However, he said, those who attacked the president had used the platform of this freedom movement for political motives.

He said there was no direct military threat to Pakistan from India as long as the peace process was going on between the two countries. However, he warned, internal threats and threats from the non-state adversaries at the domestic and international levels could destabilise the country.

When an Indian scholar pointed out that both sides need to stop demonising each other, he said Pakistan too wished so and was making efforts in this regard. But, he pointed out, it was India which had started it and was demonising Pakistan and the Pakistani leadership in its media.

He said that Bollywood movies on Kargil and against President Musharraf and other Pakistani leaders spoke volumes about the way Pakistan’s image was being tarnished in the Indian media.

“Just take four main Pakistani English dailies like Dawn, Daily Times, The News and The Nation and compare them with their Indian counterparts. You will find very little in the Pakistani press against the Indian leadership or anything tarnishing the Indian image. However, if you look at the main Indian press today you will find at least 10 to 15 anti-Pakistan articles,” he said.

Speaking about the war against terrorism, the ISPR chief referred to the ‘Pakistan-must-do-more’ statements often repeated by some countries and said it was ironic that in formal meetings the international community praised the role of Pakistan as a frontline state in the war on terror.

After the United States, he pointed out, it was Pakistan which had suffered huge losses in the anti-terror war and accomplished a lot by eliminating much of the terrorists’ infrastructure and arresting or facilitating the arrest of high-value terrorists.

He said some countries were issuing such informal statements, perhaps to pressurise the Pakistani government or to tell the people of Pakistan that they had yet to do more. He said Pakistan would continue to play its role in the war on terror because it was in its own interest.

About a timeframe for eliminating terrorism, he said: “The heavy baggage of the last quarter of century could not be unloaded overnight.”

He said societal transformation took years as it happened through an evolutionary and not a revolutionary process.