Pakistan's Musharraf threatens to quit coalition against terror

DPA
Thursday, April 12, 2007

Islamabad - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday warned of disassociating his country from the international coalition against terrorism if its commitment and sincerity to the fight was going to be continuously questioned.

'If we are bluffing each other, if I am bluffing and if ISI (the military's intelligence service) is bluffing, then we must be out of the coalition,' Musharraf said.

He was addressing a gathering of top military commanders from 22 countries at a land forces symposium on 'Common security and global war on terror' being held in Islamabad.

Reacting to the skepticism around Pakistan's role in the war on terror, he said: 'If Pakistan is not doing enough then no one is doing enough.'

The president suggested that under a joint strategy the coalition forces and Afghan troops should fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants inside Afghanistan while the Pakistani military fortified the frontier on its side to control cross-border infiltration.

Supporting Islamabad's controversial peace deals with Pakistani tribes settled along the border, Musharraf said the ongoing fighting in the South Waziristan district, in which some 300 foreign fighters had been killed, was a manifestation of the fact that Pakistan was following 'a right strategy'.

He was of the view that media, particularly in the West, had misperception about these accords.

However, Musharraf said, solely military action could not achieve the objectives, adding that there was a need to make political efforts, supplemented by development activities, to bring peace to the region.

He reiterated that lingering disputes in the Muslim world, including those of the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon had to be resolved to clamp down on extremism and terrorism.