Musharraf: Excerpts from an Interview in NYT

New York Times, September 21, 2004: Excerpts from the report.

Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said in an interview on Monday that his leadership was freeing his country from the menace of extremism and that this national "renaissance" might be lost if he kept his pledge to step down as army chief at the end of this year.

The acid test of this would be if Pakistan returns to pre-Zia normality and it simply becomes Republic of Pakistan.

And while General Musharraf asserted that he had succeeded in breaking up the network of a top Pakistani scientist who provided illicit nuclear technology to other countries, he said the full extent of that network was not yet known.

True confession and laudable, also indicative of possible continued effort.

Speaking in a one-hour interview with The New York Times after his arrival in New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting this week, General Musharraf said Pakistan was making significant inroads into Al Qaeda, arresting some 600 suspects, ending the terrorist network’s illicit fund-raising in major cities and breaking up long established bases in remote border areas. That effort, he said, required "continuity."

It is about time that Pakistan Government exercises and implements the rule of law in entire Pakistan. Musharraf’s efforts are commendable and should be carried out forcefully.

"This was a culture, a society which was moving towards extremism and fundamentalism, and I am trying to reverse this trend and give voice to the vast majority of Pakistanis who are moderate," said General Musharraf, 61, the target of two assassination attacks last December and a plot on his life in August, all, he said, planned by Al Qaeda. "Now these are not easy things which can be done by anyone, may I say."

This is the first admission of the fundamental deficiency in the conditions called Pakistan. True there are tremendous dangers to Musharraf in correcting this situation but now is the last opportunity to restore civilization in Pakistan.

Dressed in a gray business suit, seated in a straight-backed chair in his midtown hotel suite and speaking with regimental rigor, General Musharraf, the military ruler of Pakistan since seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1999, asserted that Pakistan was already enjoying the fruits of democracy, with local elections, functioning legislatures, freedom of speech and an independent press and empowerment of women.

"I’m sorry, I don’t want to boast about myself," he said, "but there is a renaissance, there is a big change we are trying to bring about."

I agree and congratulate Mr. Musharraf for providing the necessary leadership and hope that he would have the statesmanship to make serious adjustments for developing the needed rapprochement with India.

In discussing Al Qaeda, he said that among the 600 suspects detained were Uzbeks, Chechens, Yemenis and other Arabs, as well as people from Tanzania, South Africa and even China.

He said the recent seizure of computer disks in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore had shown that Al Qaeda was thinking of uprooting to Somalia or Sudan. "I think that speaks volumes for the actions we have taken against them in our cities and in the mountains," he said.

Good news, if true.

General Musharraf, a crucial ally of President Bush, who is scheduled to meet with him twice this week, firmly denied that any influence had been brought on Pakistan to produce a dramatic arrest before the November election. "This is absolutely untrue," he said.

Don’t mind if he is not telling the 100% of truth.

He said that Pakistan’s Army was taking action to end the teaching of religious extremism and hatred of the West in the religious schools known as madrasas, but that given the remoteness, the inhospitable terrain and 2,500-mile length of the border where extremism most flourished, the job was difficult.

Agree. But it is necessary to substitute religious extremism with secularism – that is what Jinnah wanted and could achieve if he had not compromised for short term and personal glorification.

"We are squeezing the religious teachers who preach extremism , we are taking them to task and removing them, but it is a slow process because there are thousands of mosques, and you don’t know who is saying what," he said. "The army is not omnipresent everywhere."

That is exactly what needs to be done. All well wishers of Pakistan must work to support the commendable objective.