Washington, May 11: Pakistan Army had turned down his government`s proposal to send ISI chief to India in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks as it believed it was "too soon", President Asif Ali Zardari indicated on Monday.
A fresh offer has now been made for a meeting of intelligence chiefs of the two countries, he said without giving any details about when this meeting is expected to take place or what has been India`s response to it.
"They (Pakistan Army) thought it was too, too soon," Zardari told the NBC News in an interview on being asked why he was overruled by the military on sending ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha to New Delhi.
The Pakistan President claimed he was not "overruled" by the military and said, "eventually we have offered for the intelligence chief to meet (his Indian counterpart).
This is for the first time that Zardari has publicly given an explanation of why he was not able to send the ISI chief to New Delhi despite the fact that Pakistan Prime
Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had made the promise in this regard to his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh over phone on November 28 in the middle of the Mumbai attacks.
This was cited as an example of the military and the ISI overruling the democratically elected Government of Pakistan.
Asked who is in control of Pakistan - the President or the military, Zardari said, "I think the military is in control of their hemisphere and I`m in control of the whole
country."
Q: Can they overrule you?
Zardari: No, I can overrule them.
Q: Haven`t they overruled you in the past?
Zardari: No, we`ve gone to their position and they have come to our positions.
Q: But you still have a final say?
Zardari: The Parliament has final say. It`s the Parliament that forms government, and I`m a product of Parliament.
In the last couple of days, Zardari has stated that he is waiting for the Indian elections to be over so that Pakistan can start a fresh dilagoue with India.
In his interview, Zardari reiterated that he does not consider India as the primary threat to his country and asserted that Pakistan at present is at war with the Taliban.
"It`s a war of our existence. We`ve been fighting this war much before they attacked 9/11. They`re kind of a cancer created by both of us, Pakistan and America and the world," he said.
Zardari, who was here to attend a trilateral summit with his counterparts of the US and Afghanistan last week, met US President Barack Obama and his top officials and discussed the strategy to deal with Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.
"We need to find a strategy where the world gets together against this threat, because it`s not Pakistan specific, it`s not Afghanistan specific. I think the world
needs to understand that this is the new challenge of the 21st century and this is the new war, and we`ve all got together," Zardari said.
"I don`t think so. I don`t think so," he said when referred to the often reported statement that there is a view in Pakistan that the Taliban should be kept around for a rainy day, as a bulwark against the Indian influence in Afghanistan.
Asked about Pakistan`s military operations against Taliban, he said that 1.25 lakh Pakistani troops are on the ground to wipe out the militants from the country.
Asked whether the US has asked Pakistan to deploy more troops on the western frontier, Zardari said, "there is a point of view that more men might improve the situation, but that`s something that still disputed by our military analysts... We think they`re sufficient."
Replying to a question whether Pakistan was capable of dealing with militancy, he that the PPP-led government has done more to damage the infrastructure of the Taliban than ever before.
Zardari also said that he was against the Swat peace deal with Taliban since he thought the militants were not "rational people".
"I don`t think there`s any good Talibans. The world does, so that`s a defensive opinion."
Bureau Report
