CAIRO, 18 September 2005 — Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf defended his country’s recent gestures toward Israel, which have angered some hard-liners, saying the moves were designed to support the Palestinians and pressure Israel into realizing their rights.

“We want to strengthen the Palestinian cause and support it. We want to try to influence Israel to establish a Palestinian state,” he said in an interview published yesterday in the Arabic-language Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. “We won’t have a role to play if we don’t deal with them. But if we talk then we can at least ... exert pressure and use our clout.”

Apparently rewarding Israel for its withdrawal from Gaza, Pakistan’s foreign minister met his Israeli counterpart in Turkey on Sept. 1, the first formal high-level contact between the two countries. On Wednesday, Musharraf and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shook hands at a reception just before the start a the United Nations summit.

But Musharraf downplayed the greeting, saying it “had no political implications.”

He also said he had informed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas beforehand of the foreign ministers’ meeting in Turkey.

He said the gestures “do not mean that recognizing Israel will happen unless we are certain that a Palestinian state is being established. This is the pressure we want to exert.”

In another interview, Musharraf told Al-Hayat newspaper: “We will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel until after the formation of the Palestinian state. An exception could be made if we feel on the ground that a state is being established.”

But some doubt such an assurance and have met Pakistan’s recent moves with fury, especially since it has previously taken a harder line against Israel than some Arab countries. Musharraf said he refuses to be cowed by such criticism.

“I’m not a man who fears opposition,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

On an issue closer to home, Musharraf told the newspaper that Pakistan was worried about military cooperation between Israel and India, but said: “We have many ways to strike a balance and guarantee our own deterrence strategy.”

Asked why efforts to capture terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden have failed thus far, Musharraf pointed to a shortage of forces, a rugged terrain and a lack of intelligence information on his whereabouts.

“If someone is hiding in a cave and is moving from one place to another, then it’s not the fault of the army or the security apparatus that he hasn’t been tracked down,” he said. “When we have intelligence information indicating the area where this man is, then moving will be easy.”

Musharraf had previously said Al-Qaeda leaders were probably hiding on either side of Pakistan’s rugged border with Afghanistan but are isolated and unable to order terror attacks. He added, however, that the terror network and its figures remain symbolic motivators.

‘US Can’t Just Pack Up and Leave Iraq’

Earlier on Friday Musharraf said the world should stop dwelling on the consequences of the US war in Iraq and move on to resolving problems like Kashmir and the Palestinian conflict.

“It has happened, so why talk about it. It is done and finished. Let’s forget it. We need to figure out what needs to be done now,” Musharraf told students at Columbia University in New York, where is he attending a UN summit.

Responding to a student’s question about Iraq, he said the 2003 invasion had made the world more complicated but added that for US forces to now leave was “easier said than done.”

“You just can’t pack up and go. You need to have a strategy of how to pack up and go,” he said. “It will take time. But I think the Palestinian dispute and the Kashmir dispute are ripe for solution today.”