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Musharraf feared U.S. 'onslaught,' he says

The Pakistani president's memoir says the United States "callously abandoned" Afghanistan.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 26, 2006

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's president says in a memoir released Monday that he had no choice after the Sept. 11 attacks but to switch from supporting the Taliban to backing the U.S.-led war on terror groups or face an American "onslaught."

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in his book In the Line of Fire, also criticizes the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, saying it has made the world more dangerous.

Musharraf, who is on a tour of the United States, is scheduled to meet Wednesday with President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai to seek ways to bridge their disagreements on the fight against Islamic militants, particularly along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier.

Musharraf says Pakistan, the United States and Saudi Arabia created an extremist "monster" by supporting Islamic groups fighting the Soviet Union's 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan.

"We had assisted in the rise of the Taliban after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, which was then callously abandoned by the United States," Musharraf says.

It was within this vacuum that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network strengthened, thanks to the support of the Taliban's leader, he adds.

Pakistan saw the Taliban as a means to end years of chaos in Afghanistan, which peaked during the 1992-96 civil war, says Musharraf, who came to power in a 1999 coup. He says Pakistan also saw the Taliban as a counter to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, which favored Pakistan's rival, India.

But after the Sept. 11 attacks, Musharraf says, he realized that continuing to support the Taliban and have ties with militant groups would set Pakistan on a collision course with Washington. "America was sure to react violently, like a wounded bear," Musharraf writes. "If the perpetrator turned out to be al-Qaida, then that wounded bear would come charging straight toward us."

The day after the suicide plane attacks, Musharraf says, Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned with an ultimatum: "You are either with us or against us."

The next day, he says, Powell deputy Richard Armitage called the chief of Pakistan's top spy agency with an even sterner warning.

"In what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made, Armitage ... told the director general not only that we had to decide whether we were with America or with the terrorists, but that if we chose the terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone Age," Musharraf writes.

Last week Armitage denied threatening to bomb Pakistan, but he acknowledged a stern warning.

Musharraf says he weighed Pakistan's options, including the possibility of militarily countering any U.S. actions. "I war-gamed the United States as an adversary," he writes, but concluded that it was impossible to confront America.

[Last modified September 26, 2006, 00:35:24]