Bush 'taken aback' by Musharraf comment

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer
33 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - President Bush President said Friday he was "taken aback" by a purported U.S. threat to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age if it did not cooperate in the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks

He praised Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for being one of the first foreign leaders to come out after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to stand with the U.S. to "help root out an enemy."

At a joint White House news conference, Musharraf said a peace treaty between his government and tribes along the Pakistan- Afghanistan border is not meant to support the Taliban.

He said news reports had mischaracterized the deals. "The deal is not at all with the Taliban. This deal is against the Taliban. This deal is with the tribal elders," Musharaff said.

Said Bush: "I believe him."

He said that Musharaff had looked him in the eye and vowed that "the tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people and that there won't be a Taliban and there wont be al-Aqaida (in Pakistan)."

In an interview to air Sunday, Musharraf said that after terrorists struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Pakistan's intelligence director the United States would bomb his country if it didn't help.

"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, `Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'" Musharraf told "60 Minutes."

Armitage told CNN on Thursday that he never threatened to bomb Pakistan, wouldn't say such a thing and didn't have the authority to do it. Armitage said he did have a tough message for Pakistan, telling the Muslim nation that it was either "with us or against us," according to CNN. Armitage said he didn't know how his message was recounted so differently to Musharraf.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Friday he didn't know the specifics of what Armitage might have said to the Pakistanis.

"But we have made very clear that we went straight to President Musharraf in the days after 9/11 and said it's time to make a choice: Are you going to side with the civilized world or are you going to side with the Taliban and al-Qaida," Bartlett told CBS' "The Early Show."

White House press secretary Tony Snow also said Friday that he doesn't know what Armitage, who no longer is in the administration, said.

"Mr. Armitage has said that he made no such representations," Snow said. "I don't know. This could have been a classic failure to communicate. I just don't know."

"U.S. policy was not to issue bombing threats," Snow said. "U.S. policy was to say to President Musharraf, `We need you to make a choice'."

In his meeting with Musharraf, Bush is playing middle man in a thorny foreign policy problem that has bubbled up between Islamabad and Afganistan — two U.S. allies in the war on terrorism who accuse each other of not doing enough to crack down on extremists.

Following his meeting with Musharraf, Bush will have talks Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Then, they'll have a three-way sitdown on Wednesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060922/ap_on_...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Hahaha... typical of GWB and his cohorts... classic failure to communicate...? These folks speak like cowboyz, who could misunderstand what they mean? there was no bomb threat? hahaha