SMH : Hijacked into terrorism war: Pakistan tells of US threat

Hijacked into terrorism war: Pakistan tells of US threat

September 23, 2006

WASHINGTON: The Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, says the US threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age after the September 11 attacks if he did not help America's war on terrorism.

General Musharraf says the threat was delivered by Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, to his director of intelligence.

"The intelligence director told me that [Mr Armitage] said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age'," General Musharraf said in the interview to be shown tomorrow on the CBS network news program 60 Minutes.

It was insulting, the president said, "a very rude remark".

But, General Musharraf said he reacted responsibly.

"One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation and that is what I did," he said.

Neither the White House, nor the State Department would comment on the conversation.

Mr Armitage told CNN on Thursday that he never threatened to bomb Pakistan, would not say such a thing and did not have the authority to do it.

Mr Armitage said he did have a tough message for Pakistan, saying the Muslim nation was either "with us or against us," according to CNN.

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

"The question of any bombing taking place, that question revolves around Afghanistan," said Ms Curtis, who has previously worked at the US Senate's 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 in terms of … choosing between the Taliban or the US," she added.

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 sensitive one between Islamabad and Washington.

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

"We wouldn't like to allow that. We'd like to do that ourselves," General Musharraf said.

AP; Reuters