Posted on 10/28/2005 7:58:54 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
LONDON: Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf has defended his handling of the October 8 earthquake and his refusal to permit Indian helicopters to fly relief sorties in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. “The world should understand that we cannot allow Indian soldiers to operate in Kashmir. Our whole defence system is there, our whole military is there,” he said in an interview with the British daily Financial Times.
He admitted that Islamist groups on the “watch-list” — such as Jamaat-ul-Dawa and Al Rasheed Trust — were providing relief in difficult areas of Pakistani Kashmir, and said his government “must beat them to it”.
Islamist groups have criticised Mr Musharraf for the slow pace of relief efforts and accused him of being more concerned with the fate of a single building in Islamabad in the vital first few hours after the quake, than the lives of th-ose in the 28,000-sq km area that was devastated.
The paper reported that Mr Musharraf made a “tactical error” by spending part of the first day of the quake at Margalla Towers, a badly damaged apartment complex in Islamabad, “where his critics say he clambered atop the rubble for no particular purpose except to provide television footage”.
The next morning, he flew to some of the worst-hit areas, including Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, where 90% of buildings were destroyed.Since he took over the reins of Pakistan in a bloodless coup in 1999, Mr Musharraf said, “there has never been a dull moment as far as I am concerned.” “We confront a problem and we try to solve it and when we are getting near a solution, another problem arises and we again confront that. It’s a new challenge. If you fail a challenge, it goes directly against you, but if we deliver, I’m sure it will have a very positive effect on me and on the government,” he said.
Mr Musharraf confidently rated his government’s performance as “good to very good”, but admitted that he was battling to assert his administrative competence in the face of stiff competition from militant Islamist groups that oppose the peace process, and from the Indian government.
Recalling his experience of the earthquake, Mr Musharraf said his first instinct was to run upstairs to help his mother in his Rawalpindi home. “She walks slowly and by the time I had got her to the door, the earthquake was over,” he said.
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Estd. 1838, in India.
That's baloney, but you can't blame Musharraf. He's got the hardest job in the world.
No he does not. You are a sucker for believing that.
Musharraf has a Khan up his sleeve.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/pakistan/khan.htm
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