Little Rock (Arkansas), Oct 21(ANI): Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has said that both Pakistan and the United States are mutually to blame for bilateral ties that remain plagued by "total mistrust" and have hit a new low.
Musharraf told an audience in Arkansas that the Pakistan military was guilty of "terrible negligence" in allowing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to go undetected in the country before he was killed in a unilateral US raid on May 2, a foreign news agency reported.
The former president also said that Pakistan had not done enough to target the Haqqani network, which is a Taliban-affiliated group of militants that allegedly operates from North Waziristan.
On the same day that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned military leaders in Islamabad about militants, Musharraf said that neither Pakistan nor the US could defeat terrorists on their own.
If US military forces launched an offensive against militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, they "will be totally bogged down," Musharraf said later in an interview with the foreign news agency.
He also blamed US mistakes in Afghanistan for the Taliban's re-emergence in the region, and said that Pakistan was a "victim and not a perpetrator of terrorism."
During the interview, he also said that former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen's recent claims that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) supported attacks on US and NATO facilities in Afghanistan by the Haqqani network, were "very, very unfair."
Musharraf said that such accusations should not be made and such judgments should not be passed against Pakistan.
The US should rather demand clarifications from Pakistan, but must be sure that the overall direction is clear, he added. (ANI)
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