US threatened to bomb Pakistan 'back to Stone Age' after 9/11: Musharraf
NEW YORK (AFP) - The United States threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" after the September 11, 2001 attacks unless it supported the war on terror, President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview.
Musharraf, whose support for the US-led war in
Afghanistan after the attacks was instrumental in the fall of the Taliban regime, said former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage made the threat to Pakistan's head of intelligence.
"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 with the "60 Minutes" investigative news programme, according to selected excepts.
"I think it was a very rude remark," Musharraf says in the interview, due to be broadcast Sunday. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that's what I did."
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Pakistan abandoned its support for the Taliban, which was sheltering Al-Qaeda leaders, and became a front-line ally in the US-led "war on terror."
Pakistan has since arrested several senior Al-Qaeda members including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 2001 attacks.
The South Asian country has also deployed around 80,000 troops on the rugged border with Afghanistan to hunt pro-Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants who sneaked into the area after fleeing the US-led invasion of Afghanistan...
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