Pakistan winning war on terror, says Musharraf
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Islamabad, Aug 5, IRNA -- Pakistan is winning its war on terrorism, which the government was confronting frontally, said President General Pervez Musharraf. The daily Dawn newspaper in its Thursday issue published an interview of President Musharraf in which he touched upon various aspects of the war on terrorism, Pak-India relations and nuclear non-proliferation. The newspaper said that Musharraf sounded emphatically confident that the government was winning the war. However, he added that people must understand the government`s policy of crackdown on terrorism would continue to create problems like bomb attacks of which he had also been a target. He lauded the services of the law-enforcement agencies for their operations spanning from the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan to the shores of the Arabian Sea, the daily said. The president recalled the pre-1999 period, when an outlaw Riaz Basra in the Punjab province had become a terror and could not be apprehended and added, "We have got them all." However, he conceded that although death penalties awarded to various people for terrorist acts had not yet been executed, 89 to 90 percent of all the cases of the past three to four years had been resolved and this was the success of the law-enforcement agencies, the newspaper noted. Musharraf said Pakistan had at one time become a shelter for a hodge-podge of foreign militant groups mixed with `our own religious and sectarian extremism`, but added: "Now we are acting against them, very actively. Previously nobody had the courage to do that. "Nobody was touching religious organizations, now we are touching them. Therefore, they will set off bomb blasts, they will create problems for you. Because, we are arresting them and we are eliminating the masterminds," he asserted. He said he was totally opposed to any religious extremist culture in Pakistan. "I will oppose them tooth and nail wherever there is extremism, religious, sectarian, extremist fundamentalism. I am against it and I will never be supporter of any organization (taking such a course)." He called religious extremism a danger for Pakistan. He justified the on-going military operation in South Waziristan Agency in tribal areas and his government`s decision to keep the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal out of the action taken to flush out militants from the area. MMA is parliamentary alliance of six mainstream politico-religious parties. President Musharraf said that the Council of Islamic Ideology had been reconstituted and he expected the reconstituted body to play proactive role in forging an enlightened approach to religion. On this occasion, he justified army interventions in the country`s politics, saying it was done to rectify situations created by an absence of checks and balances. "If the nation is going down, there is the problem, and somebody should rectify." To a question, the newspaper said, President Musharraf declined to say whether he would give up his office of the chief of the army staff by December 31 deadline set by the Constitution. About Pak-India talks, he said he had not asked for a time-frame for a solution of Kashmir dispute with India but had only called for a fast pace. "But I will like to say that we should move as fast as possible because if we don`t, we cannot have confidence-building measures. We need to move CBMs and the dialogue process in tandem which each other. This is what it is," he remarked. He expressed the process would not take years to settle the dispute. Asked why Pakistan was not removing the ambiguity about sending troops to Iraq, he said Islamabad did not want to close its options. "I never said we will send troops but I also don`t say that we will never send them." He maintained Pakistan must join if other Muslim countries such as Malaysia, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Bangladesh and India sent troops to Iraq. In reply to a question, he ruled out any trial of noted Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan for nuclear proliferation. But he strongly denied that Pakistan was acting under US pressure on the issue. MHA/TSH/2322/1432
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