Former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf has said, in Pakistan, the person who talks more sense calls the shots.

Musharraf was asked who called the shots in Pakistan, whether General Kayani, who viewed India as the biggest threat, or President Zardari, who called home-grown militancy as the biggest enemy. Musharraf’s terse reply was, “The person, who talks more sense calls the shots.”

Speaking to a packed audience at the Chatham House think-tank in London on Pakistan’s Security Challenges today, the former military strongman gave one of his strongest hints yet that he wishes to return to power.

When asked whether he had any further ambitions to political life in Pakistan, he said anyone who was capable of uniting the military, bureaucratic and political forces would be beneficial.

“However it is for the people of Pakistan to decide,” he added.

“I am a civilian, I am not a military man. I cannot take over or anything – even if I think something is wrong in Pakistan,” he said to laughter.

“So I have to come through the political process. But I think it’s very good. I will have that legitimacy which I never had.”

Earlier Mr Musharraf gave a surprisingly frank answer to a question about the relative merits of democratic and military governments in Pakistan’s 60-year history.

He said the latter had distinguished themselves by offering “better organizational capabilities” and a “better-trained mind of doing things”.

“Democratically elected governments somehow have been failing to perform,” he said.

“The ultimate objective of any government, of any state, is good governance. Whether it is democracy or dictatorship is immaterial, it has to be achieved. Unfortunately the democratic governments fail to achieve this.”

In comments after the speech to the Chatham House think-tank Musharraf said he hoped to secure the democratic legitimacy he never had during his seven controversial years in power.

“I love my country and I would like to do anything for Pakistan,” he said. “For Pakistan one would be prepared to do anything.”

Musharraf hit out at the Western approach to the war on terror and urged the West to engage with the Afghan Pushtuns and stop pursuing the misconceived security agenda in the region.

Musharraf openly justified his policy of engaging the reconcilable Taliban and striking political deals with the militants in order to wean away support from the hardcore Taliban.

Musharraf, who has no plans to return to Pakistan in the foreseeable future and has made London his base for now, made the audience laugh at several points with his wry humor and was frank in his assessment of the regional security situation.

He called Pakistan the most happening place in the world where there is never a dull moment. Musharraf, who served as president from 2001 until early 2008, gave the strongest hint that he would love to take part in the democratically-elected government process, through the power of ballot, not tanks.

Musharraf saw in himself the beneficial capability to unite the military, bureaucracy and political forces of the country. “I have to come through the political process, through the process of elections. But I think it’s very good — it’s very good because I think I will have that legitimacy which I never had,” he said. To laughter, he said he was not in a position to take over power anymore.

Musharraf defended Pakistan’s role in cultivating and supporting Taliban and said the world was now realizing that Pakistan had adopted a right approach of engaging with the Taliban to change them from within.

“I told US president George Bush in March 2000 that we propose a different strategy for the Taliban and advised him to open a US mission in Afghanistan and deal with them. I told Clinton we are better off to change their attitudes and responses from within but nobody listened to Pakistan and we were accused of double-dealing and hypocrisy.”

He said time had proven that Pakistan approach was right and today the whole world is talking about a dialogue with the Taliban. Musharraf said if Pakistan’s advice was taken seriously, then the world would have dealt with the Taliban from a position of strength, not from today’s position of weakness.

“We must have political deals. Now they are doing exactly what I was doing in 2003 — deal with the Pushtun elements. That is what has to be done. We have to go for deals, while the military pressure is fully on,” he said.

He advised the West to stop treating all Pushtuns as a monolith Taliban group. “We cannot afford to alienate them. Let’s reach out to them,” he said. He said the current disposition of the Afghan government was clearly skewed against the majority Pushtuns, who have historically ruled Afghanistan and it is their total alienation in the government institutions, following the Taliban defeat in 2001 that is driving them towards the Taliban and other militant groups.

He agreed with Obama administration’s surge approach in Afghanistan to defeat militant organizations but called Obama’s exit time-frame a wrong-headed time-frame approach which will only strengthen and embolden the militant organizations.

He identified that currently Pakistan was faced with four serious threats to its existence: threat from Al-Qaeda; threat from the Pakistani Taliban in three out of seven tribal agencies; the spread of the Taliban and their ideology in settled areas; and the gravest threat of religious extremism and its rise across Pakistan.

He praised the vision and boldness of Indian Premier Manmohan Singh, with whom he engaged in rapprochement during his tumultuous eight years, and regretted that they could not carry forward the peace process which was nearing settlement on many core issues.

For lasting stability in the region, he said, India must resolve the issue of Kashmir and address the issue of alienation of Muslim youth in India. At the same time, he asked the world to take notice of Indian activities in Afghanistan and its efforts to interfere in Pakistan’s internal matters. He said the United States and its allies must see what effects it is creating when Afghanistan is allowing India influence on its soil to the detriment of Pakistani interests. He said Indian influence in Afghanistan was an irritant and it created disharmony in the fight against terror.

Musharraf called Pak-Afghan border the center of gravity and explained that without dealing with this region with saner and effective approach, the world cannot win anywhere in fight against terrorism.

Lahore: Holding former President General Pervez Musharraf responsible for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Britain Wajid Shamsul Hassan has said that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud could not have proceeded with plans of assassinating Bhutto without Musharraf’s nod.

A private television channel reported Hassan, as saying that if Benazir would have been alive, trouble for Musharraf would have doubled.

“Had Benazir been alive, Musharraf would have been facing legal action for murdering former Balochistan governor Nawab Akbar Bugti, and removing the chief justice of Pakistan,” The Daily Times quoted Hassan, as saying.

Hassan said Musharraf had offered a much ‘bigger’ amnesty under the National Reconciliation Ordinance to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif, which allowed him to leave the country easily following the military coup in 1998.

Meanwhile President Zardari and his children has reached Naudero to attend second death anniversary of Benazir bhutto.

On the directives of a Sindh High Court (SHC) bench, the court’s office issued a notice on Thursday against former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf and asked the petitioner to get it published in London newspapers to inform him about a constitutional petition being heard by the court.

The petitioner against Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf is Maulvi Iqbal Haider of the Awami Himayat Tehrik.

The court notice pertains to his petition seeking action against the retired General and his aides, including advocate Sharifuddin Pirzada and former attorney general Malik Abdul Qayyum, for ‘disfiguring’ the Constitution and committing high treason.

A list presented in the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat on Monday revealed that only 447 of the 3,486 gifts received by state representatives (from presidents down to deputy secretaries) during foreign visits were deposited in Tosha Khana (gift depository).

The rest were retained by the receivers after paying a meager amount or free of cost. A member of the committee told Dawn that the list contained the names of President Asif Ali Zardari, former presidents Rafiq Tarar and Pervez Musharraf, former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif, Mir Zafarullah Jamali and Shaukat Aziz and a number of top bureaucrats and officials.

A meeting of the committee, presided over by its chairman Shahid Hussain Bugti, took serious note of the situation and recommended an increase in the payment for a gift from the existing 15 per cent to 50 per cent of the assessed value.

Members of the meeting expressed concern over the way the gifts — received by government functionaries during foreign visits or received from foreign guests during their visit to Pakistan — were handed over to the receivers after wrong evaluation of their market price.

Shahid Bugti told Dawn that earlier a person who wanted to retain a gift had to pay 25 per cent of the assessed value of the item, but former prime minister Shaukat Aziz reduced the payment to 15 per cent in 2006 without an approval by the cabinet.

He said that under the rules, gifts with market value of less than Rs10,000 could be retained by an official without paying any amount.

According to sources, Shaukat Aziz took the advantage of this relaxation and retained hundreds of gifts with wrong assessment of market value.

They said the list showed that the former prime minister had retained a number of precious jewel-studded wrist watches by showing their market price as just a few thousands of rupees. Mr Aziz did not even deposit gifts with a market price of only Rs1,500 or less.

Mr Bugti said the committee felt that the previously received payment of 15 per cent of the assessed value of a gift was negligible and suggested that in future assessment should be made in a transparent manner. (DAWN)

The Parliament resounded on Thursday with voices challenging the allotment of thousands of acres of state land by Musharraf to bureaucrats, politicians and his own staff members.

Unfortunately the civilian and military authorities are keeping mum over the allotment of over 15,000 kanals in violation of the policy and rules. While the government has no land to offer to civilian victims and martyrs of non-military security agencies personnel who lost their lives in the post-9/11 terrorist attacks, there is no attempt to cancel those allotments made out of the state land meant for war veterans and families of martyrs in the Punjab and the Frontier.

On the contrary, the government has been found involved in doling out state land to its favourites in regular CDA sectors whereas Sindh has sold hundreds of acres of government land particularly in Karachi at throwaway prices to well connected ones and the blue-eyed.

Interestingly, it was the Punjab that had moved to get cancelled the military state-land that was allotted to civilian employees of the province by Musharraf. It too later got cold feet and did not move despite even writing to the civilian recipients of these plots to surrender the land to the military.

Musharraf doled out hundreds of acres of agriculture state land to over 70 employees of the Aiwan-e-Sadr and revenue officials of the respective districts where the land was allotted during his stay in the office of the head of the state.

He also distributed like sweets hundreds of acres of land to dozens of civilian Revenue Department and other officials in Punjab and Frontier besides giving 1,200 kanals of land to two key leaders of a political party in the name of their close associates — all civilians (not even government officials).

The agriculture land allotted by Musharraf to his staff members varied from plot size 12.5 acres to 30 acres per person. Most of this land allotted belongs to Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar and Dera Ismail Khan. The lucky allottees include several revenue officials of these districts.It is said that they were given the plots for the reason that the land allotted to Presidency officials should be taken care of.

Besides some of the genuine allotments made to some military officials attached with Musharraf as his personal staff a number of brigadiers, colonels, majors and even captains were allotted military land meant for martyrs, etc. Fifteen to 20 gunmen of Musharraf’s security were also amongst the beneficiaries.

A total of 47 revenue officials and other members of the civilian bureaucracy in Punjab alone were allotted 6,700 kanals of land. The Punjab took notice of these allotments. Besides directing the concerned military authorities to ensure that the military land allotted to the civilian officers is not further sold, the recipients (Punjab civil officials) were asked to surrender the land allotted to them in order to avoid a possible disciplinary action.

The most controversial part of the former dictator’s largesse on state land, which was earmarked for military martyrs and war veterans, was the allotment of 1,200 kanals land made in violation of the law and policy to six persons closely associated with a senior leader of a political party and one of the top officials of the then NWFP government.

{Source: The News}

Former President Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf speaks to the students at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, USA and explains Taliban, Talibanization, advent of Al Qaeda, and how to counter them. His lecture to 2500 in attendance was titled “My View of the World”. to an assemblage of faculty, alumni, students and the public.

PKOnweb Monitor

Former president Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf who is in the United States on a 40-lecture tour criticized former premier and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif today calling him ‘abrasive’ and ‘confrontational’.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News on ‘Good Morning America’ today, Musharraf said the PML-N chief, whom he ousted in a bloodless coup in October 1999, “has never been on good terms with any army chief or president of Pakistan”, adding that the former premier was a “closet Taliban” – too close to the Taliban and Al Qaeda to be trusted …by the US.

“Even on Pakistan Television these days, talk shows are going on saying that he has met Osama Bin Laden five times – five times before 9/11 – and he has been financed by Osama,” Musharraf said. “Then the other element is that he never speaks against terrorism and extremism.” The man is a closet Taliban, he added.

Stating that Pakistan and India will face great danger from Al Qaeda if the United States pulls out of Afghanistan, the former ousted president said a pullout would result in an unstable Afghanistan.

“The country [Afghanistan] will become the centre of all Al Qaeda sanctuaries and consequently could extend its influence into Pakistan and possibly even India,” Musharraf said.

“We have to destroy al Qaeda, who are in our mountain(s). Yes, they have safe havens and they have to be destroyed, he added.

To a question on the US consideration of sending more troops to Afghanistan, he said US President Obama should have complied with Gen Stanley McChyrstal’s recommendation “yesterday”. “I think you should take it immediately. You should have taken it yesterday,” Musharraf said.

Musharraf said he “absolutely” believed there needed to be more troops in Afghanistan. But he said sending more troops could mean an increase in casualties, something the US should be prepared for.

“We must avoid casualties, as much as possible. But when soldiers move and armies act, casualties will be there, and we should accept casualties,” he said.

He said the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan should be mined, a proposition he termed “drastic”.

“As far as I’m concerned, we should mine it so that people can’t go across,” Musharraf said. And we should even fence it. We could fence it, like the Indians have done fencing. But fencing means manning the fence. Otherwise it’s a useless thing — obstacle. Mines don’t have to be manned, so there are measures, he added.

Read the entire transcript at: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/chris-cuomo-interviews-pakistani-president-musharraf-read-transcript/story?id=8657043

Former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf told a students’ gathering at Brown University in Providence (Rhode Island, NY) on Tuesday that terrorists were the greatest threat to stability in South Asia, adding that Pakistan, neighbouring India and Afghanistan represented a ‘nexus of extremism’.

Gen (retd) Musharraf also rejected a perception that Pakistan supplied arms to Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan.

‘It’s quite the opposite. The arms and money flow into Pakistan from Afghanistan, not the other way,’ he said.

The retired general pointed to the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) as an example of extremism growing among the Muslim youth in India.

‘There is a sense of frustration … of unequal opportunity and discrimination in India,’ he said.

In a 45-minute speech about ‘leadership experiences’, he blamed the current economic crisis in Pakistan on the country’s current leaders.

‘It’s not a crisis of nation or people, but a crisis of leadership. Simple as that,’ Gen (retd) Musharraf said of the massive exodus of wealth and foreign investment from the country in the past year.

In a brief question-and-answer session, Musharraf defended Pakistan’s development of nuclear arms as a logical response to India’s development of nuclear weapons, but called for peace between the two longstanding rivals.

‘I am called a man of war, but I am a man of peace because I understand the ravages of war,’ he said. ‘Military (action) only buys time, it does not deliver the cure.’

Musharraf is in USA on a 40-lectures speaking tour, using London as his base.

The main auditorium at the univiersity was filled to capacity with about 600 seated, and a nearby overflow room, where the speech was televised, had about 200 additional guests.

The former president will meet privately with US lawmakers on September 29 to discuss the changing US strategy for fighting the war in Afghanistan, according to an email obtained by AFP Wednesday.

Representative Steve Buyer, the top Republican on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, has invited fellow lawmakers to sit down with Musharraf, according to the message from his legislative director.

PKonweb Monitor

Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif has assured King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia that he would not seek my trial for high treason, claimed former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf on Sunday.

In an interview with ARY News – a local Pakistani TV channel, the ousted president said that his nemesis Nawaz Sharif had assured King Abdullah of respecting the agreement not to call for his trial under Article 6 of the constitution.

Article 6 specifies high treason for the abrogator of the consitution as well as for the abrogator’s collaborators, enablers.

Musharraf said Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is the chief justice of Supreme Court and he expects justice from him. Musharraf further said that the judges who supported him would also be treated under Article 6 if he was tried under the said article.

Musharraf said that if he had not supported the US in the war against terror after the 9/11 attacks, American forces could have entered Pakistan to capture its nuclear assets. He said it was also possible that the US and India could have jointly attacked the country.

Musharraf said the present government was following the same strategic policies with regards to the US that his government had pursued, adding there were only minor differences in the modalities of official dealings. He said the military aid given to Pakistan for the war on terror had also been used to strengthen Pakistan’s defense against India.

On July 31, Pakistani Supreme Court ruled that Musharraf’s decision to impose emergency rule and dismiss dozens of senior judges in November 2007 was unconstitutional.

Sharif has been demanding the government put Musharraf on trial for suspending constitution and high treason but PPP, PML-Q and MQM are lukewarm on this matter – due to back channel deals made by PPP as is generally known.

Sharif on Sunday called on Saudi Arabia King Shah Abdullah in Makkah to discuss the matters of mutual interest. PML-N leader Ishaq Dar told a private TV after the meeting that the Saudi King had not made any demands regarding Musharraf’s trial.

He said Saudi Arabia never interferes in the internal issues of Pakistan.