Author: Ashish Kumar Sen
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: August 6, 2002
Even as Washington lavishes praise
on Pakistan's President for being a steadfast ally in its war in Afghanistan,
General Pervez Musharraf now says he doubts Osama bin Laden had anything
to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
In an interview to the New Yorker,
Gen. Musharraf said, "I didn't think it possible that Osama sitting up
there in the mountains could do it." He added: "He was perhaps the sponsor,
the financier, the motivating force.
But those who executed it were much
more modern. They knew the US, they knew aviation. I don't think he has
the intelligence or the minute planning. The planner was someone else."
With a bounty of $25 million on
his head, Osama bin Laden tops a list of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's
most wanted terrorists. An additional $2 million is being offered through
a programme developed and funded by the Airline Pilots Association and
the Air Transport Association.
Gen. Musharraf, whose support for
the United States in the war in Afghanistan has earned him the popular
nickname "Busharraf," also defended his regime from critics in the West
who he says saw him as a dictator and an aberration to democracy. "They
should have seen how I am governing. Is it dictatorial? Is it autocratic?"
"You can't do one hundred per cent,"
he says. "But I have taken the country out of the morass that it was in.
It has been two and a half years of tremendous danger-but I can say with
satisfaction that my government has done well."
Of the constitutional proposals
he has endorsed, which would give the military a prominent role in government,
Gen. Musharraf says, "Right now, I am Chief of Army Staff, Chief Executive,
and President. What is power? Power is being Chief Executive. Taking decisions,
running the government, undertaking development, running the economy, finance,
developing the coastal highway, education. I am making these decisions.
I am going to shed that power to
the Prime Minister. So what's left? I have to make sure that Pakistan is
governed well. Is that unrealistic? I give him full authority. If he does
not do well, I will check him."
Wary of the motive behind Gen. Musharraf's
amendments to the Pakistani constitution, Congressman Frank Pallone Jr.
(Democrat-New Jersey) recently introduced legislation in the US House of
Representatives seeking to reinstate "democracy sanctions" on Pakistan.
Mr Pallone told colleagues on Capitol
Hill, "The underlying strategy behind his (Musharraf's) guise of 'transitioning
to democracy' is in fact to restructure the Pakistani government to protect
his dictatorship."
Congressman Gary L. Ackerman, a
former co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans,
was more scathing in his criticism of Gen. Musharraf. "The sham referendum
extending his term, the proposed constitutional changes which would expand
his power beyond even General Zia's wildest dreams, and the concern that
the national assembly elections in October will not be free and fair, all
point to President/General Musharraf's determination to hold onto power
and create the veneer of democracy," Mr Ackerman told a recent hearing
of the House International Relations Committee's subcommittee on the Middle
East and South Asia.
He added critically, "The response
from the US has been, at best, a mild rebuke and at worst, the turning
of a blind eye."
In his interview with the New Yorker,
Gen. Musharraf said elected governments "played merry hell" in Pakistan.
He says former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would "go to jail" if she
returned to the country, but that if her party were to win the elections
that the Supreme Court decreed must take place by October, then "they govern.
And I will ensure they govern honestly."
On the inevitable topic of Kashmir,
Gen. Musharraf says, "The people of Kashmir won't give up. It has been
our national interest since 1947, and we won't give it up."
