ISLAMABAD, May 27: President General Pervez Musharraf has disclosed that some junior officials of Pakistan Army and Pakistan Air Force have been arrested for their alleged involvement in an assassination attempt on him in Rawalpindi in December last year.

In an interview to a private TV news channel, President Musharraf said that these armed forces personnel would soon be tried. He also said the mastermind, who had planned these attacks, was a Pakistani and he was absconding.

He said there was another mastermind who had initiated and thought of assassinating him. "That mastermind certainly is in the foreigners around here. We call them Al Qaeda....... I am 99 per cent sure that it is a foreigner," Gen Musharraf said, adding that he did not know whether he (the mastermind) had got direct instructions from Al Zawahiri or Osama bin Laden. The foreigner, he said, had hired Pakistani extremists to execute the plan.

When asked whether those associated with the state apparatus were involved in these attacks, Gen Musharraf said: "Yes, there are some people in uniform. Junior-level people in uniform in air force and army."

In response to a question, he said these armed forces personnel were directly involved in the first attack in which explosives were planted on a bridge, but not in the second one. He denied that these junior-level people had any connection at the senior level of the armed forces.

"No, Not at all. I am 100 per cent sure or 200 per cent sure, because we have unearthed everything. We know exactly who is involved. We know the entire picture of both the actions," he added.

He further said: "We know their names, their faces, their identity, their families and everything." Those who were directly involved in these attacks are under arrest and those who were indirectly involved are being watched.

When asked if there was possibility of more arrests of armed forces personnel in this regard, the president said that if more people were found to be directly involved, they could be picked up.

He said: "These are extremists involved in religious activities. They had some affiliation with religious organizations. Even that is not allowed in the forces," he said. He said this act was also punishable. Joining any religious organization was against all military laws, he added.

"Let me tell you, we have unearthed everything," Gen Musharraf said, adding that all the operatives had been caught. The only persons are not there are masterminds."

He further said that he was not talking about the mastermind, who thought of the idea, but the mastermind who planned. "That man is still at large and we will get him." In response to a question, the president said that he knew who was he and that he was a very clever man.

It was a very complex operation. Hundreds of kilogrammes of explosives were first brought to Multan from the tribal area and then shifted to Islamabad and then to the Jhanda-Chichi bridge in Rawalpindi.

He said the technological methodology adopted for planting the explosives on the bridge, obtaining the vehicles for suicide attacks, hiring the people who were prepared to carry out these suicide attacks and then getting to the people who knew his movement after his landing at the Chaklala base showed that it was a very well-planned operation.

When contacted by this correspondent, the director-general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan, declined to provide further details regarding the arrest and ranks of armed forces personnel and their ranks.

"I will be compromising the investigation process, if I give you any detail," the ISPR chief said when asked about the number of those arrested. When asked whether an air commodore and a brigadier were also among those arrested, he said there was not a single high-ranking official among them.

"They are all low-ranking officials and none of them are senior officers," Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan said. He also declined to answer a question if the mastermind who planned the attacks belonged to the armed forces.

When asked about any possible link between the arrested persons and Al Qaeda as Gen Musharraf himself had said several times that those who tried to assassinate him were Al Qaeda people and that they were hiding in Wana, Maj-Gen Sultan said that President Musharraf had talked about the second attack on him when he mentioned Al Qaeda and Wana and these armed forces personnel had been arrested in connection with the first attack in which explosives had been planted under a bridge.

When asked whether there was any link between the two attacks or were they carried out by two different organizations or groups, he said: "I can't say at the moment about any connection between the two attacks."

TIES WITH INDIA: President Musharraf said India and Pakistan must show 'boldness and courage' in finding solution to their rivalry given that extremists on both sides opposed peace, adds Reuters.

He said new Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had been 'extremely positive' about the process of dialogue and dispute resolution when the two leaders spoke by telephone at the weekend.

He said finding solutions would be problematic for both countries, "because there are extremists on both sides... who take extremist positions, maximalists' positions.''