Arkansas: Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf said on
Thursday that Pakistan and the United States were mutually to blame for a
relationship that’s reached its lowest point and remains plagued by
"total mistrust”.
The Pakistani military was guilty of "terrible
negligence" in allowing Osama bin Laden to go undetected before he was
killed in a US raid, Musharraf told an audience in Arkansas. Musharraf
also said Pakistan hadn’t done enough to target Taliban-affiliated
militants known as the Haqqani network and that slain Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi had failed as a dictator.
On the same day that
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned military leaders in Islamabad
about militants, Musharraf — a short distance from her husband’s
presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas — said that neither
Pakistan nor the US could defeat militants on their own.
If US
military forces went into Pakistan’s tribal areas to attack militants,
they "will be totally bogged down," Musharraf said later Thursday in an
interview.
"Perhaps a hit-and-run action with helicopters like
they did with Osama bin Laden, but then how many such actions can they
do?" Musharraf said. "And they’ll suffer a lot of casualties."
Musharraf,
a retired general who took power in a 1999 coup and stepped down in
2008, said the Pakistani military and intelligence services needed to
"clarify" to the US their strategy for defeating the Haqqani network.
But
Musharraf blamed American mistakes in Afghanistan for the Taliban’s
re-emergence, calling Pakistan a "victim and not a perpetrator of
terrorism”. And he criticised comments last month from now-retired
Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
who said Pakistan’s spy agency supported and encouraged attacks by
Haqqani militants.
Musharraf said Mullen’s comments were "very, very unfair”.
"Don’t
pass such judgments," he said. "Don’t give such accusations. Ask,
demand clarifications. But be sure that the overall direction is clear.
Pakistan is against terrorism."
Hillary was in Islamabad on
Thursday for meetings with Pakistan’s leaders. Hillary said the US would
go after militants in Pakistan with or without the government’s help.
Musharraf,
who has lived in Dubai and London since leaving office, said during
Thursday night’s speech that he is planning an election bid to reclaim
the presidency in 2013. But he also must face allegations by Pakistani
prosecutors that he was part of a conspiracy to assassinate ex-Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto in late 2007. Bhutto, too, was living in
self-exile in Dubai before returning to Pakistan.
Musharraf
criticised Bhutto and the country’s current leadership. Asked on
Thursday by a person in the audience why he was going back, Musharraf
said: "I’m going to win. That’s why I’m going back."
He said
Pakistan faced internal turmoil over terrorism, a poor economy and the
aftermath of devastating floods last year. Without a major change,
Pakistan was headed toward becoming a "failed state”, he said.
In
discussing Gaddafi’s death later, Musharraf — who came to power after
deposing another political rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif —
said there were good dictators and bad dictators.
"Dictatorship
should facilitate democracy, should ensure that the country transforms
into a workable, sustainable democracy," Musharraf said. "That is the
job of a good dictator."
Gaddafi did not pass that test, he
said. After decades of his rule, Libya is "as illiterate, as backward,
as underdeveloped and not prepared for democracy”, Musharraf said. Online
