Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
January 25, 2008 By Tim Johnson, McClatchy News Service
While top U.S. military officials warn that al Qaeda radicals are determined to destabilize Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf said Thursday that his government had succeeded in all but eliminating the group from his country.
''They are in the mountains but in much smaller numbers. So this is the success against the al Qaeda,'' Musharraf told former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in a question-and-answer session during the World Economic Forum in the Alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland.
Musharraf said Pakistani forces had ''eliminated'' 600 to 700 al Qaeda extremists in recent years and that they were ''no more in our cities.'' Nor are they in the valleys near the border with Afghanistan, he said.
Radicals have roiled Pakistan with terrorist attacks, including dozens of suicide bombings in the past year. U.S. and Pakistani officials, in fact, blame al Qaeda-linked warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who commands 5,000 armed Taliban militants, for masterminding the assassination Dec. 27 of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Musharraf described al Qaeda's members as foreigners who have no right to be in Pakistan.
Casting homegrown Taliban radicals differently, Musharraf said they were ''our own people'' and pledged to ''wean away the population'' influenced by them.
In contrast to the alarm of U.S. officials, who cite the Taliban's growing influence in Pakistan, Musharraf said Pakistan's military forces had put the group on the defensive.
January 25, 2008 By Tim Johnson, McClatchy News Service
While top U.S. military officials warn that al Qaeda radicals are determined to destabilize Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf said Thursday that his government had succeeded in all but eliminating the group from his country.
''They are in the mountains but in much smaller numbers. So this is the success against the al Qaeda,'' Musharraf told former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in a question-and-answer session during the World Economic Forum in the Alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland.
Musharraf said Pakistani forces had ''eliminated'' 600 to 700 al Qaeda extremists in recent years and that they were ''no more in our cities.'' Nor are they in the valleys near the border with Afghanistan, he said.
Radicals have roiled Pakistan with terrorist attacks, including dozens of suicide bombings in the past year. U.S. and Pakistani officials, in fact, blame al Qaeda-linked warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who commands 5,000 armed Taliban militants, for masterminding the assassination Dec. 27 of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Musharraf described al Qaeda's members as foreigners who have no right to be in Pakistan.
Casting homegrown Taliban radicals differently, Musharraf said they were ''our own people'' and pledged to ''wean away the population'' influenced by them.
In contrast to the alarm of U.S. officials, who cite the Taliban's growing influence in Pakistan, Musharraf said Pakistan's military forces had put the group on the defensive.