The
general made that statement in an interview with BBC on Friday that sharply
contrasted with his earlier claims that the country's nuclear arsenal was safe
under a strengthened command and control authority, where he was in power or
out of it.
|
Musharraf
sent General Kidwai, the man in charge of securing the nuclear weapons, to
assure Western countries that expressed fears about the security of those
weapons that everything was under the tightest possible control.
But
that was when the general faced no threat to his power. Now that he is
fighting to stay on, he has linked the security of nuclear weapons
to his person.
"He
has touched a new low in his desperate attempt to cling on to power even if it
means undermining his own armed forces," a political analyst said. He
called it a "shameless attempt to pander to the Bush administration which
had often voiced fears about the Pakistani nuclear weapons."
Defending
his decision to declare emergency rule, Gen. Musharraf said Pakistan's nuclear
weapons could fall into the wrong hands if elections led to disturbances.
The comments came on the eve of his talks with U.S. envoy John Negroponte
who has visited Pakistan to put pressure on Musharraf to revoke the
two-week-old emergency, make peace with opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and
hold fair elections.
Musharraf warned that if elections were held in a "disturbed
environment," it could bring in dangerous elements who might pose a risk
to control of
Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
|
|
"They cannot fall into the wrong hands, if we manage ourselves
politically. The military is there -- as long as the military is there,
nothing happens to the strategic assets, we are in charge and nobody does anything with them,"
he said.
Musharraf, who took power in a coup eight years ago, cited rising Islamist
militancy and a hostile judiciary as reasons for declaring emergency
rule.
He
has said a general election will be held before January 9 and he expects to
step down as army chief and be sworn in as a civilian president beforehand.
In
the interview, Musharraf continued to launch tirade against opposition leader
Benazir Bhutto's chance of winning elections.
He blamed Ms Bhutto, who has called for him to relinquish power, for ruining
chances of a deal which would see her serving as prime minister under his
presidency.
"She disturbed the entire environment. She comes on a total
confrontational approach," Musharraf said of Bhutto, who returned from
eight years of self exile last month to lead her Pakistan People's Party in
elections.
What is pathetic that dictator Musharraf knows all to well that
extremists and militants have no support among an overwhelming majority of
Pakistani people.
His
intelligence agencies have covertly and overtly tried to establish the
fundamentalists as a power to be reckoned by supplying them arms and
ammunition. They have fueled these fears to alarm the west.
Until
recently one of the Musharraf's cabinet ministers was a known fundamentalist
who was helping extremist elements.
Besides,
the perverse 'geniuses sitting at intelligences' services headquarters
think it is necessary to tell Americans if the army gives up power, the
extremists would take over.
"How
can anyone trust him (Musharraf)," a Pakistani political activist asked,
as he repeated the popular slogan in Pakistan: "Go, Musharraf, Go."
Labels: United
Nations, U.N., Masood
Haider, Pakistan
coup, Benazir Bhutto, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, dictator
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