Author: Michael Evans and Bronwen
Maddox
Publication: The Time
Date:
URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-718582,00.html
Pakistan's President Musharraf warned
the West yesterday not to allow India to develop a military superiority
that would leave his country's nuclear arsenal as its only real deterrent.
In an interview with The Times,
General Musharraf said that a sharp rise in India's defence spending, coupled
with restrictions on Pakistan buying military equipment abroad, threatened
to create a "dangerous" imbalance in force levels between the two rivals.
In such circumstances Pakistan would have no choice but to rely on its
nuclear weapons, he suggested. "The other element of deterrence is your
capability of striking and causing such damage to an enemy that is unbearable
to him, and that can be done with a smaller force," he said. "Every country
has to survive. Any country which wants to live in honour and dignity wants
to preserve sovereign equality and its sovereignty. Nobody will compromise
with that."
General Musharraf, who held talks
with Tony Blair on Tuesday, will meet President Bush at Camp David next
week. He intends to tell Mr Bush: "There's an imbalance which is being
created. Don't let it be created." If restrictions on Pakistan buying military
equipment could not be lifted a similiar "embargo" should be placed on
India.
As if to reinforce his threat, General
Musharraf admitted that India and Pakistan came "very close" to war over
the disputed territory of Kahmir last summer. A million troops lined up
"eyeball-to-eyeball" across the border.
He denied that there had been any
chance of the confrontation "going nuclear", despite fears expressed in
the West. But he quickly added: "When a war starts (you don't know) what
direction it will take because there are a lot of intangibles which then
come in the way. No sane person in normal conditions can ever even contemplate
going into a non-conventional war, but basically the best guarantee is
to avoid conflict."
Talking in a Park Lane hotel suite,
General Musharraf criticised various aspects of the US-led War on Terror.
He has assisted that war, but it has inflamed Islamic opinion in Pakistan
and weakened his grip on the country.
He suggested that America had done
too little to rebuild Afghanistan after its war to end the Taleban's grip
on Pakistan's neighbour. "Things are not going as well as one would expect
in Afghanistan. There is a vacuum in the countryside of Afghanistan (and)
it must be filled (by international troops) or it will be filled by those
hostile to peace." He also criticised Washington for waging its battle
against international terrorism on too many different "fronts".
It "bothered" him when he heard
about countries such as Iran being targeted. It was important, he said,
to finish the job in Afghanistan and Iraq before committing resources elsewhere,
and he intended to say that to Mr Bush next week.
Asked whether America had done enough
to address the grievances that terrorists exploited, he used the analogy
of a tree and its roots. "If you eliminate a number of terrorists you are
just plucking leaves from a tree. If you eliminate an organisation like
al-Qaeda you have chopped off a branch from the tree, but the tree still
exists. You have to uproot the whole of the tree," he said. That meant
dealing with the issue which was at the heart of the terrorism disease
- the confrontation between Palestine and Israel.
"What's happening around the world
is the fallout from the Israel-Palestine issue."
General Musharraf claimed that al-Qaeda
was "on the run", and that Osama bin Laden's organisation had "ceased to
exist as an organised body". Pakistan had detained 480 al-Qaeda members,
including most of its kingpins, he said. His security forces were also
establishing control over Pakistan's untamed tribal areas on the Afghan
border where many Taleban supporters are believed to have taken refuge.
He did not doubt that bin Laden
was still alive, but said that if he was moving around with a large protection
force in Pakistan he would undoubtedly have been spotted.
General Musharraf complained about
the Foreign Office's travel advice warning Britons against unnecessary
travel to Pakistan because of a significant terrorist threat. "It is unfair,"
he said, adding that there had been no major outrages in the past ten months.
He said that peace talks with India
should start as soon as possible, but ruled out India's suggestion that
Kashmir should be just one of many subjects on the peace agenda.
"Kashmir cannot be sidelined," he
said. It had to be the prime dispute to be resolved before any other topics
could be discussed. He rejected India's accusations of continuing incursions
by terrorists from Pakistan across the line of control. He said: "Nothing
is happening and there is not one terrorist camp in Kashmir. But if they
think I am going to stop even a bird flying across the Line of Control
... I will not. I cannot guarantee nothing happens in Kashmir."
