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NEW YORK, Sept 27: Pakistan will not recognise Israel at this point in time because it does not want to be isolated in the Muslim world but ultimately it would have to do it.
President Gen Pervez Musharraf was addressing a gathering at the Cornell University in New York on Tuesday evening.
“We cannot do something that … isolates us from the Muslim world. This issue is extremely sensitive … and I would destabilise myself.” However, the President said: “But ultimately we have to do it.”
Articulating Pakistan’s policy on Israel, he said: “I have been saying we adjust relations to progress on the establishment of a Palestinian state and forward movement.”
TALIBAN: Significantly, President Musharraf referred to the latest UN report on Afghanistan that endorsed Pakistan’s position on Taliban. The report presented on Sept 24 concluded: “The foot-soldiers of insurgencies are Afghans recruited in Afghanistan.”
“They appear to act in loose coordination with each other and benefiting from financial and operational links with the drug trafficking networks,” the president said quoting the UN report.
According to the report, the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbaddin Hekmatyar is in Kunar and Taliban northern command is based in Nangrahar and Laghman provinces. The network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani is in Khost and Paktia, Juana Shura for Paktika, and the Taliban southern command is in Zabul.
“This is what the UN report says and this is what I have been trying to say for the past two months,” the president said. He said the government’s peace treaty with tribal elders in North Waziristan had seeds of success and could be replicated across the border. “Military is not the ultimate solution, it has to be through political means.”
He said Pakistan was the only country in the world that understood terrorism in all its complexities. “It was the Pakistan army, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies that broke the back of Al Qaeda,” President Musharraf said.
PAKISTAN-INDIA TIES: Referring to his recent meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he said they discussed the need to move ahead on resolution of disputes, including Jammu and Kashmir. “We have spoken about it and it has to be within our tenure,” the president said.
He noted that in order to move forward on this front both parties have to step back (from their stated positions) and added: “We also require support and understanding of peoples of Pakistan and India.” He underscored that for durable peace the core issue of Kashmir of which Siachen is also a part must be resolved.
Giving an overview of Pakistan, he said counter-terrorism, democracy, nuclear proliferation, human rights, narcotics at this juncture there were five key issues which directly or indirectly involved the country.
PAKISTAN-US: The President said Pakistan-US relations were now on the mend. He characterised the current status of relations between the two countries as broad-based, long-term and strategic. “Pakistan expects market access and direct foreign investment from the US,” he said.
DEMOCRACY: Defending the credibility of the 2002 elections in Pakistan, he said they were totally impartial.
“I am a man who supports democracy but democracy was not functioning and I have introduced sustainable democracy.” He then declared: “Pakistan is the most democratic country in the world.”
He held out the assurance that elections in 2007 would ‘also be fair and transparent’.
NUKE: On the peaceful use of nuclear technology he said: “We deserve equal treatment.”
