Musharraf denies involvement of Pakistan in cross border terrorism

Kabul, Sep 7 (UNI) Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf today said there were al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan who were crossing over into Afghanistan, but denied that his government or the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, had anything to do with it.

He said both countries had to stop blaming each other and move forward.

His speech as well as the promises and the peace agreement he announced in North Waziristan, however, had only a lukewarm welcome in Afghanistan with senior leaders and officials adopting a wait and watch approach.

In his response to President Musharraf's speech, President Hamid Karzai spoke of the need to join together, saying the calls from Afghanistan were not accusations but a call for help.

Launching an appeal to Afghanistan through a speech to a select gathering of civil society and politicians, the Pakistan President said Pakistan had indeed sided with the Taliban in the fight between mujahideen and the Taliban, but that was because of ethnic compulsions. (The Taliban leadership were almost all Pashtuns from the southern half of Afghanistan with close ethnic and cultural ties to the Pashtun community in Pakistan).

However, after 9/11, Pakistan joined the coalition against terrorism and now viewed all Afghans equally.

General Musharraf said Pakistan would follow a policy of complete non interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and provide the country the help that it wanted.

Referring to the coming inauguration of the Jalalabad-Torkham road, he said Pakistan also wanted to finance and build a railway link between Quetta and Kandahar.

The president asked Afghans to forget the recent past, appealing to the earlier shared history where both countries had fought together against the Soviet Union.

''We launched a jihad, collectively with the west. We brought mujahideen from outside the region, from the Muslim world, we brought Taliban, trained them, armed them. We did it together with the West,'' he said.

Both the countries had been left high and dry after contributing to the defeat of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, he said.

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