WASHINGTON, June 28: President Gen Pervez Musharraf has termed Pakistan-US ties as “broad-based and strong.”
“I’m fully satisfied with the state of US-Pakistan relations,” the president said during an interview to the Washington Times.
Gen Musharraf said the Islamic societies faced a period of intense self-examination and must choose between confronting the United States and the West or adopting politically moderate, “self-emancipating” policies.
The Muslim world must adopt a strategy of evaluating ourselves, deciding whether we want to follow a militant, confrontationist approach or choose a self-emancipating path away from poverty, away from a lack of production and opportunity,” Gen Musharraf told newsmen at a luncheon at the Times.
But the president said the US must address quickly the security and political problems in Afghanistan and Iraq to counter “the very real feeling that it is the Islamic world as a whole that is being targeted” in the war on terrorism.
Insisting that the vast majority of Pakistanis rejected militant Islamic policies, he said relations with Washington were complicated by irritants including the US refusal to sell F-16 jets to Pakistan to a post-Sept 11 visa crackdown that affected many Pakistanis in the US.
In response to a question, Gen Musharraf said he had “broken the taboo” in his country about discussing diplomatic relations with Israel.
“Why should Pakistan be more Palestinian than the Palestinians?” he asked.
If Israeli-Palestinian peace talks prove fruitful, that would lead to “evolving of a national consensus” in the matter, he said.
For the attacks on churches, Gen Musharraf blamed “extremists inflamed by the events in Afghanistan and the Middle East.” He, however, said the violence had been condemned by a cross-section of Pakistanis.
About Iraq, he Pakistan would consider a request to contribute up to a division of troops to a peacekeeping force, but that it would participate only under the auspices of the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Conference or some other international overseer.
He urged the US and its coalition partners to return power to an Iraqi-led government as soon as possible to avoid a destabilizing breakdown of authority that could have consequences throughout the Middle East.
He said rising Indian defence budgets and weapons purchases were “tilting the conventional balance of forces in South Asia.”
He said he was more than willing to reciprocate Indian efforts to ease tensions. “I tell you, for every step they take, we will take three,” he said. “There is a broad understanding that the policy of my government allying with the US is in the national interest,” he claimed.—APP