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I am against terrorism, says Musharraf

Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf said on Wednesday that he was "against terrorism and the Mumbai blasts were a terrorist act. Whether it is Mumbai, the attack on the Indian Parliament, it is terrorism. Pakistan deplores it, I am against it."

He was addressing a press conference, following an iftaar he hosted for the Pakistani and international media.

Asked about the recent allegation of a Pakistan hand in the Mumbai blasts, he said he had not been shown any evidence in Havana, but had told India "from the beginning, let's cooperate."

He said the intelligence sharing would help prevent such acts. But he said that it would not all be "one-way traffic".

"There are some allegations here also, and we would like to get some information about that. It has to be two-way traffic," he said.

For the first time, there was an agreement on intelligence cooperation, Gen. Musharraf said. And for the first time too, there was an agreement to solve all issues, including Jammu and Kashmir.

"You won't find that in any other document. But it is there [in the Havana declaration]. This is a positive move forward," he said.

He said the two countries could resolve the Siachen and Sir Creek dispute "tomorrow, in one meeting," with political will.

"I believe the secretary-level meetings on these two issues have run their course. They have had so many meetings. I always say `paralysis through analysis.' I think decisions can be reached in one meeting," he said.

Joint mechanism

Gen. Musharraf said the details of the joint anti-terror mechanism were yet to be worked out, but if anyone in India was levelling criticism against Dr. Singh for the agreement on intelligence co-operation, it was "unfair."

"It is only one line in the agreement. We have yet to finalise the modalities of this institutional arrangement. We must cooperate against any terrorist act, whether it is in India or Pakistan, and we must have a mechanism for this. The criticism is misplaced. It is just cooperation," he said.

He said through his book, In the Line of Fire, he had achieved his objective of projecting Pakistan to the world, and clarified the country's position on the issues of terrorism and extremism, democracy, nuclear proliferation, and on Kargil.

Kargil `misunderstood'

"Kargil is the most misunderstood episode. The whole world knows Kargil only through the Indian media, Indian news, and Indian propaganda. Now I have given the reality about Kargil, about Agra, [the information about which] were all dominated by foreign media," he said.

When it was pointed out that many, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, disagreed with his book and that Mr. Vajpayee put out a statement denying the book's version of what went wrong at Agra, Gen. Musharraf said he had "great respect" for the former Indian Prime Minister, but everything he had written in the book, was the "truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

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