Author: Warren Hoge
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 21, 2004
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, said in an interview on Monday that his leadership was
freeing his country from the menace of extremism and that this national
"renaissance" might be lost if he kept his pledge to step down as
army chief at the end of this year.
And while General Musharraf asserted
that he had succeeded in breaking up the network of a top Pakistani
scientist who provided illicit nuclear technology to other countries,
he said the full extent of that network was not yet known.
Of his promise to serve only as
the country's civilian president after Dec. 31, General Musharraf
said, "Yes, I did give my word that I would." The step has been viewed
as fulfilling his larger promise to return Pakistan to democratic
rule, "but the issue is now far greater than this," he said.
Speaking in a one-hour interview
with The New York Times after his arrival in New York for the United
Nations General Assembly meeting this week, General Musharraf said
Pakistan was making significant inroads into Al Qaeda, arresting
some 600 suspects, ending the terrorist network's illicit fund-raising
in major cities and breaking up long established bases in remote
border areas. That effort, he said, required "continuity."
"This was a culture, a society which
was moving towards extremism and fundamentalism, and I am trying
to reverse this trend and give voice to the vast majority of Pakistanis
who are moderate," said General Musharraf, 61, the target of two
assassination attacks last December and a plot on his life in August,
all, he said, planned by Al Qaeda. "Now these are not easy things
which can be done by anyone, may I say."
Dressed in a gray business suit,
seated in a straight-backed chair in his midtown hotel suite and
speaking with regimental rigor, General Musharraf, the military ruler
of Pakistan since seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1999, asserted
that Pakistan was already enjoying the fruits of democracy, with
local elections, functioning legislatures, freedom of speech and
an independent press and empowerment of women.
"I'm sorry, I don't want to boast
about myself," he said, "but there is a renaissance, there is a big
change we are trying to bring about."
Though he said he had not yet decided
to remain army chief beyond the Dec. 31 deadline, he asked pointedly,
"How did General de Gaulle continue in uniform all through his period
as president of France, and France is a democratic country?"
In discussing Al Qaeda, he said
that among the 600 suspects detained were Uzbeks, Chechens, Yemenis
and other Arabs, as well as people from Tanzania, South Africa and
even China.
He said the recent seizure of computer
disks in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore had shown that Al Qaeda
was thinking of uprooting to Somalia or Sudan. "I think that speaks
volumes for the actions we have taken against them in our cities
and in the mountains," he said.
General Musharraf, a crucial ally
of President Bush, who is scheduled to meet with him twice this week,
firmly denied that any influence had been brought on Pakistan to
produce a dramatic arrest before the November election. "This is
absolutely untrue," he said.
He expressed intense irritation
with critics of Pakistan's level of commitment to the campaign to
capture the Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "When I read about this
issue of we are not doing enough and all that, I really don't like
that at all for Pakistan," he said, his voice rising. "Who else is
doing enough? Who else is doing anything, by the way? Only Pakistan
is doing enough."
He said that Pakistan's Army was
taking action to end the teaching of religious extremism and hatred
of the West in the religious schools known as madrasas, but that
given the remoteness, the inhospitable terrain and 2,500-mile length
of the border where extremism most flourished, the job was difficult.
"We are squeezing the religious
teachers who preach extremism , we are taking them to task and removing
them, but it is a slow process because there are thousands of mosques,
and you don't know who is saying what," he said. "The army is not
omnipresent everywhere."
General Musharraf cited similar
difficulties in keeping resurgent forces of the Taliban, Afghanistan's
former rulers, from using border areas for initiating attacks on
their homeland and attempting to disrupt elections there.
"We are trying to do our best not
to let them do that,'' he said. "Our resolve is to not allow them
to interfere in the elections. But we cannot guarantee it. We do
not have the capability to seal the border in a watertight manner."
He said he was certain that he had
dismantled the network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's
atom bomb who was exposed this year as a major furnisher of illicit
nuclear know-how and material to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
But he said he was not certain that
he had discovered the full extent of Mr. Khan's activities. American
intelligence officials say the three countries may have accounted
for less than 50 percent of the network's customers.
"I'm 200 percent sure that it has
been shut down," Mr. Musharraf said of Dr. Khan's network. "But if
you say whether I am sure over what he's provided in the past, no
sir, I'm not. I can't say surely that he has honored everything that
he has done."
He rejected charges that his government
had denied American investigators the chance to question Dr. Khan,
whom he pardoned, saying the Americans never requested it. And what
would be the response if they did ask?
"We wouldn't let them," he said.
"That would show a lack of trust in ourselves. I mean, we must trust
our own agencies."
