Pakistani leader tells of American threats

WASHINGTON – President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan says the United States threatened to bomb his country back to the Stone Age after the 9/11 attacks if he did not help America’s war on terror.

Musharraf says the threat was delivered by Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, to Musharraf’s intelligence director, the Pakistani leader told CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes.”

“The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,’ ” Musharraf said in the interview to be shown Sunday on the CBS television network.

It was insulting, Musharraf said. “I think it was a very rude remark,” he told reporter Steve Kroft.

But Musharraf said he reacted responsibly. “One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation and that is what I did,” he said.

According to “60 Minutes,” Armitage disputed the language attributed to him but did not deny the message was a strong one. The former Bush administration official could not be reached immediately by the Associated Press Friday at his home or his office.

Pakistan to this day is considered a close ally of the United States in the struggle with militant groups. Sometimes, however, Pakistan appears reluctant to go after Taliban, which controlled neighboring Afghanistan until 2001 and has intensified its insurgency in the southern part of the country in recent months.

Musharraf is scheduled to meet today at the White House with President Bush and then see Bush again next week in a three-way meeting with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

Julie Reside, a State Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the reported conversation between Armitage and a Pakistani official.

The White House also declined to comment on the record on the reported conversation between Armitage and a Pakistani intelligence official.