New Delhi: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is busy belting out bytes, and he is doing it with much panache.
After his much-touted book release in the US – with US President George Bush and US Secretary General Kofi Annan as audience - Musharraf has shrewdly ensured that he becomes the cynosure of the international media.
From scandalous “revelations” like India stole Pakistan’s nuclear programme to taking on Bush head-on, Musharraf has manipulated the media successfully.
The latest byte came during an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, where Musharraf criticised his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai, calling him an ostrich.
"He is not oblivious. He knows everything. But he's purposely denying - turning a blind eye like an ostrich. He doesn't want to tell the world what is the facts for his own personal reasons. In the governance of Afghanistan is there a certain community which is feeling alienated and this country has 50 to 60 per cent representation of Afghanistan and that is his problem. He has to balance out and he is not being able to do that and, therefore, he is trying to hide that everything is happening in Pakistan. If you keep going wrong, I have been telling the world for three months, "we are delaying we are getting late" all of this that I've read is what is happening in Afghanistan, in all the provinces. This is a movement going on. This is a Pashtun uprising," said the General.
He also denied that a deal worked out with tribal leaders along the Afghan-Pakistan border offers amnesty to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as critics have claimed.
He also assured that Pakistan is working with the US in the hunt for bin laden.
“We operate on our side of the border and US forces and allies operate on the other side. Now, having said that, we are hunting Osama and Zawahiri together. We are on the hunt, we are on lookout for him. when we locate him, we have to take action, we have to take effective action to do away with him,” he said.
Next Page: '7/7, 9/11 linked'
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Musharraf is scheduled to meet Wednesday with President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai to seek ways to bridge their disagreements on the fight against Islamic militants, particularly along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier.
'London bombings, Sept 11 linked'
And, it’s not just bin Laden, Afghanistan and Karzai at the receiving end of the General’s talk.
Musharraf in his memoir - In The Line of Fire also claims that the mastermind of the Sept 11 attacks helped lay the groundwork for the London subway bombings and a plot to strike Heathrow Airport.
''We had learned from KSM (Mohammed) that al-Qaeda's planners were thinking seriously about bombing Heathrow Airport ... as well as London's subway system,'' Musharraf wrote.
This comes after the General admitted that the United States paid Pakistan millions of dollars to hand over nearly 700 al-Qaeda suspects, including the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
''We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars,'' he says, without specifying how much was paid.
Among those in US custody is ex-al-Qaeda No. 3 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind captured in Pakistan in March 2003, two years before the London subway bombing.
Musharraf wrote that Mohammed was linked to the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings, and plans to attack Heathrow airport with hijacked passenger planes. The allegation is the first publicly linking Mohammed to the subway attacks, which killed 52 people and four bombers.
Musharraf said a suspect detained in Lahore in 2004 by Pakistani authorities had been ordered by Mohammed to carry out reconnaissance for possible attacks on Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf - a financial district of London - and the city's subway system.
(With AP inputs)
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