ISLAMABAD, 27 September 2006 — President Pervez Musharraf’s memoirs could project his status on the world stage, but it could touch off controversies and strain relations with neighbors, analysts said a day after the book’s launch.

Just why Musharraf chose to write his autobiography, titled “In the Line of Fire,” while still holding office has perplexed many Pakistanis, and some questioned his right to publish the memoirs. The release of the book during a year in which Musharraf’s popularity, by his own admission, had hit a low added to people’s consternation.

“I think he wrote this book at a time when he is thoroughly discredited,” Roedad Khan, a former senior bureaucrat, said.

The book got a subdued response in the country. A few bureaucrats, some diplomats, local heads of multinational corporations, executives of state-run companies and those eyeing for big contracts from the government bought copies of the book.

“Buy the book,” though US President George W. Bush told the joint press conference at the White House but for an ordinary Pakistani the book holds little interest.

“Richard Armitage contradicted Musharraf’s statement and that erodes the credibility of the book,” commented many journalists in Islamabad. Some journalists like Mushahid Hussain, Talat Hussain and Najam Sethi scoffed at Armitage’s statement.

For foreign readers, Musharraf’s chapters dealing with the war on terrorism could generate a sense of relief that the general is still at the helm. “He is telling the West that you have to keep me there, if you want to win the war on terror,” said Roedad Khan, who believes the publication of the book may have breached an oath of office.

“Such remarks may well sell your book but it creates more controversies,” Asad Durrani, former head of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s top spy agency, said.

“I don’t see any good impact on relations because of this book, rather it could harm them.” Analysts also voiced concern about a sitting president writing about security issues and relations with other countries.

“I am sure there will be protests,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author and expert on Afghan affairs.

Musharraf said he went against the advice of aides to write the book because it could rile neighbors India and Afghanistan and accuses the United States of threatening to bomb his country “back to the Stone Age.” “Most of the people in fact were against my writing this book at this moment, but like a good military leader, I took the decision against the major part of their advice,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

“I have been chastised by associates for being forthright and overly candid, and this is reflected, I think, even in my writing style,” he said at the launch of his 335-page memoirs.

Musharraf’s book recounts how he decided it would have been suicidal for Pakistan to go to war against the United States after being threatened by Washington a day after Al-Qaeda’s strikes on Sept. 11.

With the United States demanding Pakistan’s help to launch attacks on Al-Qaeda and its Taleban hosts in Afghanistan, Musharraf recalled how the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell had telephoned him with an ultimatum: “You are either with us or against us.” Musharraf in his book said the chief architect of the Sept. 11 attacks was also linked to last year’s suicide blasts on the London transport network.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003, confessed that Al-Qaeda sized up London’s subway for an attack at the same time as it hatched a plan to crash jets into Heathrow.

“We had learned from KSM (Mohammed) that Al-Qaeda’s planners were thinking seriously about, and discussing, bombing Heathrow Airport in London ... as well as London’s subway system,” Musharraf writes.

“The suspect had been told by KSM to carry out reconnaissance of, and prepare a plan to attack, Heathrow Airport. After initial planning, he also suggested Canary Wharf and London’s subway system as additional possible targets.”