Tweet
A day after President Barack Obama slammed Pakistan’s tie-up with “unsavoury characters” in preparation for an Afghanistan free of US-led coalition forces, former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf has termed Afghanistan the stage for a proxy war between India and Pakistan.
“In Afghanistan, there is some kind of a proxy conflict going on between Pakistan and India,” he told ABC News, claiming: “India is trying to create an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan.”
Instead of addressing the points that Obama brought up so publicly and pointedly, Musharraf kept up his harangue against India which, according to him, has a vision of dominating the whole region and weaken Pakistan.
On US-Pakistan relationship, Musharraf sought to draw a distinction between the present situation and the one when he was at the helm. Asserting that his personal relationships with President Bush and Colin Powell helped ease tensions, he remarked: “I wonder whether that exists now, that understanding, that mutual confidence. Maybe it is not there and, therefore, yes, there is a total breakdown of confidence and that is what is harming the relationship.”
Perhaps the one thing in which he was in agreement with the present dispensation in Islamabad was in being a state of denial over Osama bin Laden living comfortably for five years in a Pak garrison town. It is not a case of Pakistani Government complicity, but a “terrible case of negligence”, he claimed.
“In Afghanistan, there is some kind of a proxy conflict going on between Pakistan and India,” he told ABC News, claiming: “India is trying to create an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan.”
Instead of addressing the points that Obama brought up so publicly and pointedly, Musharraf kept up his harangue against India which, according to him, has a vision of dominating the whole region and weaken Pakistan.
On US-Pakistan relationship, Musharraf sought to draw a distinction between the present situation and the one when he was at the helm. Asserting that his personal relationships with President Bush and Colin Powell helped ease tensions, he remarked: “I wonder whether that exists now, that understanding, that mutual confidence. Maybe it is not there and, therefore, yes, there is a total breakdown of confidence and that is what is harming the relationship.”
Perhaps the one thing in which he was in agreement with the present dispensation in Islamabad was in being a state of denial over Osama bin Laden living comfortably for five years in a Pak garrison town. It is not a case of Pakistani Government complicity, but a “terrible case of negligence”, he claimed.
