http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/07-pakistan-not-under-threat-from-india-musharraf-ha-08


Pakistan not under threat from India: Musharraf 

Friday, 17 Jul, 2009 | 09:55 PM PST | 

ISLAMABAD: The greatest threats to Pakistan come from the Taliban, al-Qaida and 
home grown extremists and not from India, former Pakistani president and army 
chief Pervez Musharraf told an Indian television news channel.

The United States would like the Pakistan army to be less preoccupied by any 
potential threat from India and concentrate on destroying the Taliban and al 
Qaeda forces ranging across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

'Obviously at this moment there is no war scenario and there are no threats at 
this moment,' Musharraf said of India during an interview with CNN-IBN that was 
recorded on Wednesday in London and will be aired on Saturday.

Kashmir is at the core of a decades-old dispute between Pakistan and India and 
the cause of two of their three wars since their independence from British rule 
in 1947.

Both became nuclear armed states in 1998, and having gone to the brink of a 
fourth war in 2002, they embarked on a peace process two years later.

'I don't think India is posing any offensive move or offensive attitude,' he 
said, according to a transcript of the interview given to Reuters.

Musharraf said threat perceptions shifted according to circumstances, citing 
the tensions that ballooned after last November's attack on the Indian city of 
Mumbai by Islamist militants from Pakistan.

Musharraf resigned last August in the face of an impending impeachment motion. 
He left Pakistan over a month ago.

He told CNN-IBN that his government had been close to settling several 
territorial disputes with India in 2007, but his own domestic political 
difficulties stopped the two sides from sealing any agreement.

India called for a pause in a five-year-old peace process following the Mumbai 
attacks.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani 
agreed in Egypt this week that there should be a resumption of dialogue, but 
Singh said the peace process would not be resumed until Pakistan brings the 
Mumbai culprits to account


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