Asif Ali Zardari Vows To Free Pakistan Of Taliban
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 2:57 pm
NEW YORK: President Asif Ali Zardari has pledged to free Pakistan of the Taliban militants, saying they are cancer to the society. “It is my decision that we will go after them, we will free this country,” he said in an interview with The New York Times while responding to a question about The Taliban insurgency.
“Yes, this is my first priority because I will have no country otherwise. I will be president of what?” Zardari, who was interviewed by NYT’s columnist Roger Cohen, was asked if the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, motivated him to confront the militancy.
“Of course, he was quoted as saying in Cohen’s op-ed column on Monday. ‘It’s my revenge. I take it every day.”
He continued: “I will fight them because they are a cancer to my society, not because of my wife only, but because they are a cancer, yes, and they did kill the mother of my children, so their way of life is what I want to kill; I will suck the oxygen out of their system so there will be no Talibs.”
Asked if he was afraid in confronting them, he said, “I am concerned; I am not afraid. Because I don’t want to die so soon, I have a job to do.”
Replying to a question about the role of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the president said, “The ISI will be handled, that is our problem. We don’t hunt with the hound and run with the hare, which is what (Pervez) Musharraf was doing.
“Anyone not conforming with my government’s policy will be thrown out.”
Zardari also indicated that he wants to cooperate with the United States in training specialized counter insurgency army units. “I mean business,” he said. “ We will train ourselves with the US present as trainers to raise the quality of certain forces.”
But he warned against further US military incursions inside Pakistan, the object of recent tension. “It is counterproductive and a political price is paid,” he said, especially if no high-level target is found.
Zardari said his “new medicine” for the tribal areas would include industrial investment, incentives for alternative crops to poppy like corn, and a message that “we are hitting the Taliban” so make sure “your space is not being used by them.” He noted that historically, “Nobody travelled through these mountains without either paying them or hiring them or sharing the booty of India with them.”
Zardari made an impassioned plea for the Saudis and others to slash his annual oil bill by $15 billion and give “a democratic Pakistan oil at their base price.”
Columnist Cohen said Zardari asked the French for helicopters and the US for “blanket support” in persuading every country to buttress Pakistan “according to its strengths.”
After he talked of revenge for Benazir’s death, Columnist Cohen quoted Zardari as saying: “I am not a warmonger. I am not interested in physical might, which is not the expression of my strength. I have many strengths, and one of them is that I can take pain, not give pain. I don’t consider anyone who can give pain brave, I consider anyone who can take pain brave. That is why I consider a woman a stronger gender because she can take much more pain than a man.”
Commented the New York Times columnist: “From a Muslim leader, and one so bereaved, I salute that, without reserve.”
Columnist Cohen also wrote that Zardari was “very smart, street smart … secular, pro-American, committed to democracy, and brave. I never heard Musharraf frame Pakistan’s fight against terrorism with such candor.
“I believe he wants genuine conciliation with India and Afghanistan, essential to the region’s stability. (Positive meetings were held here with the Indian and Afghan leaders.).” He called for supporting him for civilization’s sake.
“The next US administration must be forthright in support, relentless in demanding results, and ruthless where necessary. It must not be had, as Bush was.”
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