The US threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks unless it supported the war on terror, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview released on Thursday.
Musharraf, whose support for the US-led war in Afghanistan after the attacks was instrumental in the fall of the Taliban regime, said former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage made the threat to Pakistan's head of intelligence.
"The intelligence director told me that [Armitage] said, `Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'" Musharraf said in the interview with the 60 Minutes investigative news program, according to selected excepts.
"I think it was a very rude remark," Musharraf says in the interview, due to be broadcast tomorrow. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that's what I did."
Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Pakistan abandoned its support for the Taliban, which was sheltering al-Qaeda leaders, and became a front-line ally in the US-led "war on terror."
Pakistan has since arrested several senior al-Qaeda members including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 2001 attacks.
The South Asian country has also deployed around 80,000 troops on the rugged border with Afghanistan to hunt pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda linked militants who sneaked into the area after fleeing the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
The White House declined to comment on Musharraf's comments, with a US official saying on condition of anonymity only that Pakistan had made "a strategic choice" to help after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Armitage's alleged threat also demanded that Pakistan turn over border posts and bases for the US military to use in the war in Afghanistan, which ended with the Taliban regime's collapse in late 2001.
Other "ludicrous" demands required Pakistan to suppress domestic expressions of support for militant attacks on US targets, according to the CBS network, which produces 60 Minutes. "If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views," it quoted Musharraf as saying.
In the interview, Musharraf also reveals an embarrassing episode in which former CIA director George Tenet confronted him in 2003 with proof that the father of Pakistan's nuclear program was passing secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, held as hero in Pakistan for helping to make the country a nuclear power, admitted giving away nuclear secrets in a televised confession in February 2004, exposing a global black market in nuclear technology.
"He [Tenet] took his briefcase out, passed me some papers. It was a centrifuge design with all its numbers and signatures of Pakistan. It was the most embarrassing moment," Musharraf says.
It was only then, he says, that he realized that not only had blueprints been leaked, but that centrifuges themselves -- a crucial element in enriching uranium to weapons grade -- were being passed on, CBS said.
Musharraf denies that anyone in the government or military was aware of the leak. He pardoned Khan the same month, but the ailing scientist has since lived under virtual house arrest in a leafy diplomatic sector in Islamabad.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS