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By Ali Imran
WASHINGTON, May 10 (APP):
President Asif Ali Zardari Sunday said Pakistan is fighting militant
insurgency for its survival but the world powers including the United States
must back Islamabad’s anti-terror effort as they also bear a collective
responsibility for the current turmoil in the region. “It’s a war of our existence.
We have been fighting this war much before 9/11. They (militants) are a kind of
a cancer created by both of us, Pakistan and America, and the world.”
“We got together, we created
this cancer to fight the super power (Soviet Union that occupied Afghanistan in
1979) and then you went away without finding a cure for it. And now we have come
together to find a cure for it,” he told NBC channels Meet the Press Program.
Asked if he was suggesting that
it is the preeminently a U.S. responsibility, Zardari said:
“No. I think it is a joint
responsibility of all democracies of the world.”
Elaborating, he said, it was
this consideration of collective responsibility that brought forth the Friends
of Democratic Pakistan initiative so that “we can bring more strength to
(addressing) the situation.”
“You’ve got to admit that we
all have been trying to battle this for the last eight years, the world powers
have been trying to battle this for the last eight years in Afghanistan and
nobody has come out a victor as yet.”
On Islamabad’s strategic
anti-terror efforts, he said, Pakistan has deployed on its Western Afghan border
“three times the amount of troops you (the US) has battling them in Afghanistan
- that is 125,000 we have on ground.”
“We think there are sufficient
(Pakistani) troops” to battle the Taliban in the border region, he added.
President Zardari rejected the
negative projections about the stability of the Pakistani state in the face of
the Taliban insurgency.
“Is the state of Pakistan going
to collapse? No. We are a 180 million people. The population is much more
(bigger) than the insurgents are.
“We have a problem. Because, as
I said, it was a monster created by all of us. We got together and (then) we
forgot to find a cure for it.”
He was fully confident that the
democratic government would overcome the challenge of militancy.
“Of course,” President Zardari
replied when asked if his government could survive politically the challenge of
violent extremism.
He said the problem of violent
extremism is neither Pakistan-specific nor Afghanistan-specific, it is all the
way from the horn of Africa and there have been attacks in Europe and Saudi
Arabia.
“I think the world needs to
understand that this is the new challenge of the 21st century, and
this is the new war and we have to all get together.” President Zardari rejected
the allegation that some elements in Pakistani security services sympathize with
the Taliban.
“I wouldn’t agree with you. I
think General Musharraf may have had a mind-set that I—to run with the head and
hunt with the hound. But certainly not on our watch. We don’t have that thought
process at all.”
Zardari ruled out sharing
nuclear secrets with Washington, saying it is a matter of sovereignty for
Pakistan.
“Why don’t you do the same with
other countries yourself? I think it’s a sovereignty issue and we have a right
to our own sovereignty. It’s a sovereign country,” he reacted.
He disputed the contention that
Pakistan was adding to its nuclear stockpile at a faster pace.
“That’s, that’s, that’s not a
fact. It’s a, it’s a position that some people have taken.We, we’re not adding
to our stockpile as such.”
President Zardari said his
government is in control of the country and the military is in control of their
hemisphere.
“The parliament has final say.
It’s the parliament that forms government, and I am a product of the
parliament.”
President Zardari firmly
opposed any moves to condition US assistance for Pakistan and instead argued
that both countries should proceed on mututally agreed timelines in a reciprocal
way to make their efforts result oriented.
“I think it’s doubting an ally
before you go into action together.
If we are allies—and we, and we
understand, it’s an accepted position that you—we cannot work this problem
out unless Pakistan, Afghanistan and America are on the same page. How do you go
and take an ally along by saying, “OK, I don’t trust you,” from the first day?
It’s not a, a good position to be in.
“So I feel that we shouldn’t
have any, any kind of conditionalities. We should have a result, a
result-oriented relationship where I should be given a time line and I’ll give
you all a time line so we can both give each other time lines and meet the time
lines on, on the, on, on the positive.”
Zardari reiterated Pakistan’s
demand that the country be equipped with the pilotless drone technology to go
after militant targets on its soil.
“I would consider them (drones)
to be very effective if they were part of my arsenal. I’ve been asking for them,
but I haven’t got a positive answer as yet. But I’m not giving up.”
In answer to a question he felt
al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is not alive.
“I’ve said before that he—I
don’t think he’s alive--- I have a strong feeling and I have sole reason to
believe that, because I’ve asked my counterparts in the American intelligence agencies
and they haven’t heard of him since seven years.”
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