USA: Musharraf discusses Pakistan's policies and security concerns at the release of his memoir 'In the Line of Fire'

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, at the promotion of his memoir ' In the Line of Fire, in New York addressed the major concerns of his role as president of Pakistan. "I decided to write this autobiography after my place in the world stage, I thought evoked a curiosity about me and the country I lead, Pakistan. I want to tell my story and that of one of the world's most important Muslim states," he said Musharraf, bristling at allegations his country harbours Taliban rebels, criticized Afghanistan's leader on Monday, saying he was failing to draw people away from the Islamic militants. Hamid Karzai had earlier levelled charges against Pakistan, that the government across the border had failed to act despite having been given enough intelligence. "Intelligence to be effective should be immediate. Nobody, no target sits there waiting for you three months come and catch me. If you give telephone numbers which are three to six months old, this becomes ridiculous and this is exactly what happened. He (Karzai) gave these numbers to me when he came with his intelligence boss also sitting on a presidential visit and he handed over the file to me. Right in front of him I actually was extremely rude to his intelligence boss. I said is this your sense of intelligence that you were waiting for a presidential visit to hand over these file of numbers to me?" Musharraf also discussed the Kashmir and ways and means by which to solve the crisis with neighbour India. During a meeting on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Havana earlier this month, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Musharraf agreed to start talks again, and the Indian leader accepted an invitation to come to Pakistan, though no date has been set. Responding to a question from a journalist in the audience, Musharraf said, "I personally think that we need to talk of demilitarizing, we need to talk of giving self governance to the people of Kashmir, and then we need to have an overall joint management body overseeing both sides of the line of control." Musharraf, who is pressing for faster progress on resolving the Kashmir dispute, wrote in his book that he was still waiting for Singh to come up with an "outside the box" solution. India has shown more interest in agreeing a series of confidence boosting measures, and insists that Pakistan stop cross-border terrorism before it goes any further on Kashmir. Towards the end of the Q&A session, President Musharraf was riled at a question from a member of the audience who stated that Musharraf had not done enough in Quetta, in northern Pakistan where he believed that the Taliban had seized control. "Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan, Quetta has today a provincial assembly functioning. We have a military core headquarter there with two divisions there. There is no question that any Taliban headquarter can be there. This is the most ridiculous statement and the most ridiculous thought that the Taliban headquarter can be in Quetta." President Pervez Musharraf's memoir gives readers a firsthand account of Pakistan's War on Terror, relations with India and the Kargil conflict and the details of the coup that made him premier in 1999. He also wrote about how the CIA has paid Pakistan millions of dollars for catching al Qaeda fighters during the five years since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The president's memoirs are in stores now is green and white in the colours of the Pakistani flag and bears a portrait of a saluting Pervez Musharraf.

ITN Source | September 26, 2006

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