Pakistan is not specifically
looking for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as there is no proof he is in Pakistan,
President
Pervez Musharraf has said.
“We are not particularly
looking for him, but we are operating against terrorists and al-Qaeda and militant Taliban. And in the process, obviously, combined, may be we are looking for him also,”
President Musharraf told CBS television in an interview aired late on Sunday.
Asked what Pakistan was doing to find the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Musharraf said it was fighting extremism and terrorism. “We are fighting first of all al-Qaeda. Let’s take al-Qaeda. We have arrested or eliminated about 700 al-Qaeda leaders ... which other country has done this?”
“Well, which other country has bin Laden?” his CBS interviewer replied, inciting a sharp retort from Musharraf. “No, I challenge — I don’t accept that at all. There is no proof whatsoever that he is here in Pakistan.” Pakistan Ambassador to the US Mahmoud Ali Durrani sought to clarify President Musharraf’s remark, in an exchange with CNN.
“I think the president is suggesting that neither we, nor the US, has any intelligence where exactly Osama bin Laden is,” Durrani said. “He may be in Afghanistan,” the ambassador said. “He may be in the border region. If we knew where he was, we would have taken him out.”
Durrani noted that the US and other foreign intelligence agencies believe bin Laden to be sheltering in the tribal area along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But “that’s just speculation,” the envoy said.
“Believe me. If they knew or we knew we would have taken him out,” he said. “And when Musharraf says that he’s not specifically looking for Osama, what he really means is that we are totally focused on destroying al-Qaeda and the Taliban network and not just one person.”
President Musharraf claimed he never disliked slain PPP leader Benazir Bhutto but disagreed with her many a times, though she used to “change the goalposts frequently” to suit her agenda.
“The PPP leader used to change the goalposts frequently, depending on the ups and downs here in the country and on many occasions she annoyed me but on many other occasions she was positive,” Musharraf said.
“I think in such a situation it’s not your personal like and dislikes. It’s more for the nation that I thought one has to interact with her...No I wouldn’t say I didn’t like her — well, I like or dislike, I didn’t have any kind of personal friendship with her,” Musharraf said in apparently his first personal observation on Benazir.
He maintained that he had personally told Benazir that she was under threat and that under the circumstances, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader should not have done the things she did on that fateful day in December.