NYT : Pakistani Leader Claims U.S. Threat After 9/11

Pakistani Leader Claims U.S. Threat After 9/11

By REUTERS | September 22, 2006

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said yesterday that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with the American campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

General Musharraf, in an interview with “60 Minutes” that will be broadcast Sunday on CBS, said the threat came from Richard L. Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, and was made to General Musharraf’s intelligence director.

General Musharraf said the intelligence director had told him that Mr. Armitage had said: “ ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.’ ”

General Musharraf added, “I think it was a very rude remark.”

Mr. Armitage was not immediately available to comment. A Bush administration official said there would be no comment on a “reported conversation between Mr. Armitage and a Pakistani official.”

But the official said: “After 9/11, Pakistan made a strategic decision to join the war on terror and has since been a steadfast partner in that effort. Pakistan’s commitment to this important endeavor has not wavered, and our partnership has widened as a result.”

General Musharraf is in Washington and is set to meet with President Bush at the White House today.

The Pakistani leader, whose remarks were released by CBS, said he had reacted to the threat in a responsible way. “One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that’s what I did,” he said.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, Pakistan was one of the only countries to maintain ties with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which was harboring the Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden. But within days of the attacks, General Musharraf cut Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and cooperated with efforts by the United States to capture Qaeda and Taliban forces that had sought refuge in Pakistan.

The official 9/11 Commission Report, based largely on government data, said United States national security officials focused immediately on securing Pakistani cooperation as they planned a response.

Documents showed that Mr. Armitage met the Pakistani ambassador and the visiting leader of Pakistan’s military intelligence service in Washington on Sept. 13, 2001, and asked Pakistan to take seven steps.

They included ending logistical support for Mr. bin Laden and giving the United States blanket overflight and landing rights for military and intelligence flights.

The report did not discuss any threats the United States might have made, but it said that General Musharraf had agreed to all seven United States requests the same day.

Lisa Curtis, a South Asia specialist with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, said she did not know exactly what Mr. Armitage had said, but was skeptical that he would have threatened to bomb Pakistan.

“The question of any bombing taking place, that question revolves around Afghanistan,” said Ms. Curtis, a former employee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.

“I would find it difficult to believe he talked about bombing Pakistan specifically because, while I don’t know the exact contents of the conversation, I do know it was a pretty firm ultimatum” as far as taking sides with the United States or supporting the Taliban, she said.

With the Taliban still fighting in Afghanistan and statements by the Afghan government that Pakistan must do more to crack down on militants in its rugged border area, the issue is again a delicate one between Islamabad and Washington.

General Musharraf reacted with displeasure to comments by Mr. Bush on Wednesday that if he had firm intelligence that Mr. bin Laden was in Pakistan, he would issue the order to go into that country.

“We wouldn’t like to allow that,’’ General Musharraf said at a news conference. “We’d like to do that ourselves.”