NEW YORK - Former president Pervez Musharraf said Thursday that the fact that Osama bin Laden turned up in Pakistan after a decade-long manhunt reflected the country’s negligence and not its complicity with the Al-Qaeda leader.
Appearing in Little Rock, Arkansas, as part of the Clinton School of Public Service lecture series, he said he understands the world views Pakistan as complicit in helping bin Laden hide out in Abbottabad where he was ultimately tracked and killed in a US raid. “It’s a case of terrible negligence, but negligence which is difficult to prove,” he said. “I don’t think they are doing a good job of proving this.”
Musharraf, speaking before about 500 people at the Robinson Centre in downtown Little Rock, said the Osama bin Laden issue “maybe would have been resolved” if relations hadn’t been broken off with the Taliban, according to media reports.
He said ex-US president Bill Clinton suggested to him in 2000 that Pakistan break off relations with the Taliban, but he believed it would be more effective to put worldwide diplomatic pressure on the group from within.“Unfortunately we didn’t do that,” he said. “I personally call that one of the big blunders of the past.”
Later, in an interview with The Associated Press, the American news agency, Musharraf said if US military forces went into Pakistan’s tribal areas to attack militants, they ‘will be totally bogged down.’ “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 also 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 intelligence 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.”
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.
Musharraf criticised the country’s current leadership. Asked 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 Libyan leader 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.
