Posted on 09/22/2006 12:11:59 AM PDT by MadIvan
Musharraf reveals post-9/11 threat in book serialised by The Times
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, the President of Pakistan, claimed last night that the Bush Administration threatened to bomb his country “into the Stone Age” if it did not co-operate with the US after 9/11, sharply increasing tensions between the US and one of its closest allies in the war on terrorism.
The President, who will meet Mr Bush in the White House today, said the threat was made by Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, in the days after the terror attacks, and was issued to the Pakistani intelligence director.
“The intelligence director told me that [Armitage] said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age’,” President Musharraf said. “I think it was a very rude remark.” The claims come at the end of a week in which relations between the US and Pakistan have sharply deteriorated, and days ahead of the publication of President Musharraf’s memoir, In the Line of Fire, which will be serialised in The Times from Monday.
On Wednesday, President Bush, in an interview with CNN, said that he would not hesitate to authorise immediate American military action inside Pakistan if he had intelligence of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. Asked if he would give an order to kill the al-Qaeda leader, Mr Bush said “absolutely”.
President Musharraf was clearly angered by Mr Bush’s declaration that the US would act independently of his authority inside Pakistan.
“We wouldn’t like to allow that. We would like to do that ourselves,” he said. The President’s potentially incendiary claim of US threats comes at a particularly sensitive time between Washington and Islamabad, amid suspicion in Washington that Pakistan is not doing enough to curb a resurgent Taleban in Afghanistan, or in the hunt for bin Laden.
Before the 9/11 attacks Pakistan was one of the only countries in the world to maintain relations with the Taleban, which was harbouring bin Laden, and the Pakistani intelligence services had close relations with the Taleban regime.
In recent days Islamabad has vehemently denied US media reports that it has struck a deal with al-Qaeda and Taleban militants inside Pakistan, and even one report that it has assured bin Laden that if captured, he would not face prosecution. President Musharraf told the CBS 60 Minutes programme that when he was told of Mr Armitage’s threat, he reacted in a responsible way. “One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that’s what I did,” President Musharraf said.
Documents showed that Mr Armitage, who last night disputed the language but did not deny the claim, met the Pakistani Ambassador and the visiting head of Pakistan’s military intelligence service in Washington on September 13, 2001, and asked Pakistan to take seven steps.
President Musharraf told CBS that he was irked by US demands that Pakistan turn over its border posts and bases for the American military to use.
He said some demands were ludicrous, including one insisting that he suppress domestic expression of support for terrorism against the United States. “If somebody’s expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views,” he said.
The official 9/11 commission report on the attacks, based largely on government documents, said that US national security officials focused immediately on securing Pakistani co-operation as they planned a response.
Within days of 9/11 President Musharraf cut his government’s ties to the Taleban regime in Afghanistan and co- operated with US efforts to track and capture al-Qaeda and Taleban forces that sought refuge in Pakistan. President Bush often praises Islamabad for being one of Washington’s greatest and most crucial allies in the war on terrorism.
President Musharraf also spoke about his embarrassment when informed at the UN in 2003 by George Tenet, who was then CIA Director, that Pakistani nuclear weapon technology had been passed to Iran and North Korea by the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, A. Q. Khan.
“[Tenet] took his briefcase out, passed me some papers. It was a centrifuge design with all its numbers and signatures of Pakistan. It was the most embarrassing moment,” President Musharraf told CBS.
He learnt then, he says, that not only were blueprints being given to Iran and North Korea, but that the centrifuges themselves — the crucial technology needed to enrich uranium to weapons grade — were being passed to them.
“[Khan] gave them centrifuge designs. He gave them centrifuge parts. He gave them centrifuges.
“[The shipments] were not done once. They must have been transported many times.”
STRAINED DAYS
# September 11, 2001. President Musharraf condemns attacks on the US as “brutal and horrible”
# February 2002. On a visit to the White House Musharraf says: “We reject terrorism . . . we will continue to fulfill our responsibilities”
# February 2004. Nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan accused of selling secrets. Musharraf denies knowledge of his activities
# December 2004. Bush says Musharraf is “a person with whom I’ve worked very closely over the past four years”
LOL.
It was because of a lot of talk and no action that terrorism was allowed to grow in the 1990s. I remember reading a report where Uday Hussein said in March of 2003 that this President doesn't mess around he says what he means. This is what we need all these nations assume they can pay us lip service and get away with anything.
One of my childhood Heros said that,,What-A-Guy,,From what
I had heard,,He was 12ft. Tall ! I saw Him on the Flight-Line at BAFB in 1955 or so,,All Farts-N-Darts and See-gar,
Looked just like anybodys ol' fat PaPaw,,,
HEY,PERV,,,His Bombers Are Rite Down The Road !
Wanna Be LAOS ?
ARC-Light,ARC-Brite !
Every interview with musharraf i have read, i have noted he has made all kinds of apparently candid comments, in some cases quite open about problems he has had or things he has done or not done. this guy is next to death's door (not from the US so much as islamic elements in his own country) and apparently has done quite a bit despite multiple attempts to kill him.
i have no doubt the stone age language might well have been used. pakistan would not be allowed to be neutral in september 2001.
in case my previous comment gave an erroneous impression, i know full and well that realpolitik rules any country's and presumably any dictators underlying motives (barring the megalomaniacs), but in spite of this musharraf has made a number of interesting comments that almost couldn't be made up (or at least had no apparent motive for such).
has this appeared on the BBC yet? Would have thought they would be onto it like a shot.
I think he meant bomb the UP to the stone age.
Armitage interview conducted on April 19, 2002:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline////shows/campaign/interviews/armitage.html
"The evening of Sept. 11, and the following morning, you had emergency meetings. Was the president very clear that you were going to Afghanistan?
The president set the stage very early on. We had a good indication that it looked like things pointed to Osama bin Laden. It wasn't 100 percent, but as the president said the next day or the day after, the noose was tightening. He made it very clear that we would respond, and respond robustly to this. We hadn't determined the nature of our response. He gave us -- the different secretaries, secretary of state, et cetera -- word to go forth and to form a mighty coalition. We started the next morning.
The most important part of that diplomatic jigsaw was presumably Pakistan. Can you remember the moment when Pakistan was mentioned?
I don't remember it in that meeting. But we knew that [General Mahmood], the director of intelligence for Pakistan, was here as a guest of, as we say around here, "another agency of government," and we knew Pakistan was key.
I spoke to Secretary Powell and said I'd like to call this fellow in. I called him in at noon on Sept. 12. He was a visitor to the CIA, of course. I called him in and had a very short and, I think, hard-hitting conversation with him.
Can we go into that conversation?
He was immediately willing to cooperate. I explained to him that what I was going to be asking him, [what] we were formulating, and [that] it would, at a minimum, cause deep introspection for Pakistan. This would not be something that was negotiable; it was a black or white situation. The president had said, "You're with us or against us." The president was speaking out forcefully, not only against those who conducted operations of terror, but those who supported terrorism or allowed terrorists to exist, and to think carefully.
He pushed back a bit, saying that he wanted to talk about the history of U.S.- Pakistan relations. I interjected that I knew very well the history of Pakistan, General, but we're talking about the future, and for you and for us history starts today. That was the end of the meeting.
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