Frontline player of the US-led war.The News...
President Pervez Musharraf has no misgivings as he counts the dead but also the dollars that have come to Pakistan since his pivotal decision a year ago to turn the Islamic republic into the frontline player of the US-led war on terrorism.
"No regrets, not at all," the ex-commando told AFP in an antechamber of his official residence, adorned with gilded pistols, antique sabres and wall-hangings depicting turbaned warriors brandishing muskets on horseback.
"There have been negatives, but there have been more positives. "The tragedies that we've suffered, it's very bad, we feel very sad," he said, pausing to dwell on the 59 lives lost in attacks on Christians and Westerners by vengeful militants incensed at his alliance with Washington in crushing the Taliban and pursuing the zealots' al-Qaeda guests.
"We have to, we will, carry on operations against these terrorists or al-Qaeda," said the general. "These are hard facts that we do have to accept, that there are some casualties."
Snipers in the shadows of the sweeping gardens that grace the white-colonnaded colonial-era Army House, where Musharraf has lived since becoming army chief four years ago, belie the grounds' apparent serenity. Pakistan has seen a chain of attacks on Christian and Western targets, the latest on August 9, since Musharraf executed his famous foreign policy U-turn by reversing support for the fundamentalist Taliban theocracy.
Three weeks after the first shower of US bombs on Afghanistan on October 7, militants struck in Pakistan, gunning down 16 worshippers at a Catholic church in Punjab. The slaying of US reporter Daniel Pearl and subsequent strikes on a diplomat-filled church in Islamabad, French naval engineers and the US consulate in Karachi, a school for mainly Western Christian aid workers' children, and a Christian hospital claimed 59 lives -- 14 of them Westerners -- and sent foreigners and their capital fleeing. "That is the price we pay," said Musharraf.
"There are some extremists who have increased their anti-American feelings here and maybe anti-West feelings, plus an increase in the feeling among some extremists against my government." "This manifests itself in the form of these terrorist attacks around Pakistan. It's most unfortunate. "But the positive sign is that we have either rounded them up or killed them," he said.
The death toll is low against the backdrop of the thousands killed in sectarian violence in Pakistan in the past decade, but the cost to foreign investment was high. "Investment went down. Investors had started coming, then they shied away - even Pakistani investors," Musharraf said, adding that exports dipped 27 per cent on the jitters of overseas buyers and hikes in freight and insurance costs due to the war in Afghanistan.
But elsewhere the economy has been the winner, with Pakistan's 38-billion dollar foreign debt the chief beneficiary. "The gains have been on the economic side," he said. Washington in particular, lifting military and economic sanctions imposed over Pakistan's nuclear programme, has been lavishing Islamabad with aid, debt relief and cash grants, pledging one billion dollars in unprogrammed assistance.
"About 12.5 billion dollars of debt has been restructured," Musharraf said, stressing that three billion dollars of that sum was rescheduled by the United States. "The US have also (promised) us a one billion dollar debt write-off," he added, referring to President George W Bush's commitment to persuade Congress to cancel a billion dollars of Pakistan's debt.
The International Monetary Fund provided a $1.5 billion loan. "Then we've got market access into the European Union, with duty reduced to zero, and imports allowed of our textiles, which will bring in about 500 million dollars," Musharraf said. "You see, we are acting in our own interests." |
