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Politics

Bush says U.S. didn't threaten Pakistan into alliance

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 23, 2006

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that if a U.S. official tried to strong-arm Pakistan into fighting the war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he didn't know about it.

Standing beside Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Bush brushed off any idea of disagreement, praising Musharraf for pursuing terrorists, including Osama bin Laden.

"We're on the hunt together," Bush said after an Oval Office meeting with the leader of the world's second-largest Islamic nation.

Musharraf has contended that after the Sept. 11 attacks, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Pakistan's intelligence director that the United States would bomb the country if it didn't become a partner in the war against terrorism.

"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,' " Musharraf said during an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes, scheduled to air on Sunday.

Bush said he learned of the purported conversation from news reports. "I just don't know about it," he said. "I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words."

Armitage said he never threatened a strike but did say firmly, "You are either for us or against us."

Armitage, who met with Musharraf on Thursday, told the Associated Press: "I was not authorized to say something like that. I did not say it."

In Pakistan, Ameer ul-Azeem, a spokesman for a hard-line opposition Islamic coalition, said Musharraf's contention would anger people who have long believed they were forced "at gunpoint" into supporting the war on terror.

[Last modified September 23, 2006, 01:26:15]