Pakistani leader says use of nuclear weapons against India would be "last resort" Sun Apr 7, 7:17 AM ET
BERLIN(AP) Pakistan would use nuclear weapons against its neighbor India in their military standoff over Kashmir (news - web sites), but only if the country is "in danger of vanishing off the map," President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview published Sunday. "The use of nuclear weapons is only the last resort for us. We are acting responsibly," Musharraf told the German newsweekly Der Spiegel. "And I am optimistic and self-confident enough to believe that we can also defend ourselves conventionally." The South Asian nuclear rivals have fought three wars since independence in 1947. They have faced off on their border and the cease-fire line dividing Kashmir between them since a Dec. 13 attack on the parliament building in New Delhi that India blamed on Pakistan-based Islamic militants. Musharraf also said he wants to see the main suspect in the abduction and slaying of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl put to death and said it was "plausible" that alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) had died of a kidney ailment in Afghanistan (news - web sites). Musharraf, who aligned Pakistan with the U.S. war on terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, said he was confident that Islamic terrorists lacked the ability to undermine his government or Pakistan's stability. "The terrorists are a small minority, a nuisance, not more," he told Der Spiegel. Terrorists from bin Laden's al-Qaida network "may also have been involved," he said, without providing details. He also accused India of "numerous attacks" on Pakistan. "Granted, I can't offer proof for everything. But just recently we arrested three infiltrators near the Indian border," he said. Musharraf defended his decision to swing Pakistan behind the U.S.-led war against Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan's western neighbor, saying most Pakistanis support his policies. "It was the most difficult political decision of my life," he said. "Especially with respect to giving the Americans overflight rights and logistical support for the war in our neighbor Afghanistan." In the Pearl case, Musharraf insisted that chief suspect Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh face justice in Pakistan. Saeed, one of four men who went on trial Friday in Karachi for the Wall Street Journal reporter's kidnap-slaying, has also been indicted by a U.S. grand jury. "I want to see him sentenced to death," Musharraf said. "If convicted, he should hang — in the country in which he committed the crime." The Pakistani leader said he didn't know Osama bin Laden's whereabouts. "The suspicion seems plausible to me that he died in the mountains of natural causes — his kidney ailment. Whether dead or alive, I believe it's obvious that he did not leave Afghanistan."
