US did not threaten to bomb Pakistan: Armitage

Seoul, Sep 25: Washington did not threaten to bomb Pakistan ''back to the Stone Age'' after the September 11 attacks but a Pakistani official may have distorted US resolve to press Islamabad for help, a former US diplomat said today.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, in an interview with CBS News magazine show ''60 Minutes'', charged that after the September 11 2001 attacks, the United States threatened to strike Pakistan if it did not cooperate in America's campaign against the Taliban.

Musharraf said Richard Armitage, then deputy secretary of state, told Pakistan's intelligence director to ''be prepared to be bombed.

Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age'.'' Armitage said at a US-South Korean security forum in Seoul: ''This conversation never happened''.

''I had a very strong conversation with the intelligence chief,'' Armitage said. ''I told him that for Americans this was a black or white issue. Pakistan was either with us our against us.

''I have no doubt that the intelligence chief was quite inflammatory in the language he used with President Musharraf,'' he said.

Last week, Armitage told CNN he did not make the comments and in Seoul he reiterated he did not threaten to use military force and he was not authorised to use it.

''It will be noted that President Musharraf made these comment while he is beginning a book tour. I think you have ample reason to see why he might want to use this language. I think it probably sells books,'' Armitage said in Seoul.

Musharraf, who told CBS the Stone Age warning was a ''very rude remark, dodged a reporter's question to elaborate on the issue, citing a contract with his publisher for his memoir ''In the Line of Fire''.

''I would like to -- I am launching my book on the 25th, and I am honour-bound to Simon&Schuster not to comment on the book before that day,'' he said.

The White House said it was not US policy to threaten Pakistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, as it sought Islamabad's cooperation against Afghanistan's Taliban, who were sheltering al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Reuters