WASHINGTON, 22 September 2004 — Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf claimed in an interview published here yesterday that Pakistan was making significant inroads breaking the Al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden.
They included the arrest of some 600 suspects, disrupting the terrorist network’s illicit fund-raising in major cities and breaking up long established bases in remote border areas, he told the New York Times.
“This was a culture, a society which was moving toward extremism and fundamentalism, and I am trying to reverse this trend and give voice to the vast majority of Pakistanis who are moderate,” said Musharraf.
Among the suspects detained were Uzbeks, Chechens, Yemenis and other Arabs, as well as people from Tanzania, South Africa and even China.
Musharraf was the target of two assassination attacks last December and a plot on his life in August, all, he said, planned by Al-Qaeda. “Now these are not easy things which can be done by anyone, may I say.”
Musharraf said fighting terrorism required “continuity” and that this national “renaissance” might be lost if he kept his pledge to step down as army chief at the end of this year.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to boast about myself,” he said, “but there is a renaissance, there is a big change we are trying to bring about.”
Meanwhile, the police said yesterday they have detained a gang of sectarian militants trained in Afghanistan and suspected of involvement in massacres of dozens of minority Shiite Muslims.
Police had “succeeded in tracing major cases of sectarian terrorism” which took place in southwestern Balochistan province during the past five years, city police chief Pervaiz Rafi Bhatti said.
“We have arrested 10 most wanted men accused of involvement in sectarian killings” in recent weeks, Bhatti told reporters late Monday.
