The U.S. has said that it is taking very seriously former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf’s claim that arms provided by it to fight Islamic terrorists were moved to bolster defence against India instead.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly Monday said: “We take very seriously any allegation of using U.S.-origin military assistance for purposes other than we had already agreed to and that we had intended them for.”
To a query on when the weapons were sold to Pakistan, was there an understanding or a provision that they would not be used against India, the official said: “Yeah. I — well, again, I don’t know all the details of what Mr. Musharraf said. But I believe that he was referring to this most recent assistance to help fight religious extremists in Pakistan. So I think that was the intent of this latest round anyway. But I just — I don’t know exactly what he was referring to.”
Gen. Musharraf recently left Pakistan amid a growing demand to try him for imposing emergency in the country and for ordering the confinement of Supreme Court judges.
The Islamabad police had on August 10 registered a criminal case against the former President and military dictator following the orders of Islamabad Additional Sessions Judge Mohammad Akmal Khan.
Judge Khan was acting on a petition filed by advocate Mohammad Aslam Ghuman who sought action against Gen. Musharraf for ordering the confinement of Supreme Court judges after declaring an emergency on November 3, 2007.
The complaint states that Gen. Musharraf and others had detained the Supreme Court judges and their families at their houses and their children were neither allowed to attend school nor permitted to appear in examinations.
The Supreme Court had ruled on July 29 that year that the declaration of emergency was unconstitutional and illegal.
