Musharraf threatens to quit terror fight

dpa German Press Agency
Published: 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.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency

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