WASHINGTON (AP) – President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan says the United States threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age after the 9-11 attacks if he did not help America’s war on terror.
- Angela Cesere
- Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf arrives for a luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington yesterday hosted by the House International Relations Committee. (AP PHOTO)
Musharraf says the threat was delivered by Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, to Musharraf’s intelligence director, the Pakistani leader told CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes.
“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 to be shown Sunday on the CBS television network.
It was insulting, Musharraf said. “I think it was a very rude remark,” he told reporter Steve Kroft.
But Musharraf said he reacted responsibly. “One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation and that is what I did,” he said.
According to 60 Minutes, Armitage disputed the language attributed to him but did not deny the message was a strong one. The former deputy secretary of state could not be reached immediately by the Associated Press at his home or his office.
In a speech in January 2002, four months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Musharraf gave a speech in which he clearly came down on the side of reform at home and opposition to Islamic fundamentalism.
Pakistan to this day is considered a close ally of the United States in the struggle with militant groups. Sometimes, however, Pakistan appears reluctant to go after Taliban, which controlled neighboring Afghanistan until 2001 and has intensified its insurgency in the southern part of the country in recent months.
He is scheduled to meet today at the White House with President Bush and then see Bush again next week in a three-way meeting with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.