West partisan towards India, alleges Musharraf

London, May 28: Bristling with anti-India sentiments, former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf has accused the US and other western countries of being partisan towards it and repeated allegations that New Delhi supported rebels in Pakistan.

Pressed hard on whether there was any Pakistani complicity in Osama bin Laden's sheltering in Abbottabad, an apparently uneasy Musharraf countered the posers by alleging that India was aiding Baloch rebels in Pakistan.

In an interview to the BBC, Musharraf responded to tough questions by presenter Jeremy Paxman by saying that Pakistan was ''sensitive'' about its nuclear assets and India.

He did not name Balochistan in the interview, but said: "Do you know we caught five truckloads of weapons very recently, just about two months back. Five truckloads of anti-aircraft missiles, rocket launchers, mortars. Now, who brought these five trucks? Who gave these? Americans or the Afghanistan government? No sir. India gave them. And we know it."

He acknowledged fears in the west that Osama bin Laden had a support network in Pakistan, but claimed: "I can't imagine in my wildest dreams that the intelligence agency was doing something without telling me, so therefore there was no complicity at the strategic level."

Musharraf insisted that when he was in power, he did not know that bin Laden was sheltered in Abbottabad. He said: "It is difficult to prove non-complicity. We can call it negligence, we can call it ineptitude, whatever, failure."

PTI