PARIS/ISLAMABAD, 3 August — French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is set to meet President Pervez Musharraf when he visits Pakistan today, a privilege denied to his British counterpart a fortnight ago.
French Embassy officials said a meeting was scheduled with President Musharraf during De Villepin’s six-hour visit to Islamabad, his first since taking office in May.
De Villepin will discuss the traditional bilateral issues of trade, economic assistance and defense cooperation, as well as elections scheduled for Oct. 10 and Kashmir.
Most importantly, De Villepin is coming to Islamabad with the firm objective of setting in place a special arrangement which will see France increase its involvement in Pakistan’s fight against international terrorism, effectively replacing the US-provided experts who had until now largely monitored and influenced Pakistan’s efforts to eradicate terrorism from its soil.
According to a member of De Villepin’s entourage, one of the first aspects of the stepped-up collaboration between Pakistan and France with regard to terrorism will be setting straight the record with regard to the supposed presence on Pakistani soil of Osama Bin Laden.
French anti-terrorism experts who will be accompanying the French foreign minister to Islamabad say they want to put an end “once and for all” to the persistent rumors according to which Bin Laden is alive and well and living on Pakistani soil, somewhere near the country’s border with Afghanistan.
France, which has long had intelligence operatives working in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and notably the difficult-to-access border region between the two countries, is expected to tell Gen. Musharraf that it is convinced that Bin Laden is nowhere in the region, and in any case, in their estimation he is long dead.
One of the experts accompanying the foreign minister said the rumors emanate from Washington and “are largely self-serving, especially as they have allowed the United States not only to justify their military presence in Pakistan, but also have permitted them to pressure Gen. Pervez Musharraf into decimating the supposed militant networks considered close to Al-Qaeda.”
