America tried to smooth over differences with Pakistan today, after General Pervez Musharraf accused the Bush Administration of threatening to bomb his country if it did not co-operate in the war on terrorism.
General Musharraf, who met President Bush in Washington this morning, claimed last night that Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, had warned his intelligence director that Pakistan would be bombed "back to the Stone Age" if it refused to join the fight against the Taleban and al-Qaeda in the days after 9/11.
Today the White House said that it was not US policy to make such threats and ascribed General Musharraf's allegation to a possible misunderstanding. President Bush said he was "taken aback" when he read the claim in this morning's newspapers.
Speaking while Mr Bush met General Musharraf for an hour in Washington, the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, tried to check the fall-out from the Pakistani President's remark, but acknowledged that Islamabad had been presented with a stark choice.
"US policy was not to issue bombing threats. US policy was to say to President Musharraf: ’We need you to make a choice,’" said Mr Snow.
"At the outset of the war in Afghanistan, the United States did say to President Musharraf: ’You’ve got to make a choice you’re going to be for the Taleban or you’re going to be with us,’" he said. "President Musharraf decided to play a role and he has been a vital ally in the war on terror."
Later, when asked about General Musharraf's comment during a joint press conference with the Pakistani President, Mr Bush said he knew nothing of the alleged threat and that Pakistan had been one of America's earliest and closest allies in the war in Afghanistan.
"The first I heard of this was when I read it in the newspaper today and I was taken aback by the harshness of the words," he said, referring to the controversy as "the Armitage thing".
Mr Armitage has also denied General Musharraf's claim, although when asked what the former Deputy Secretary of State might have said, Mr Snow said today: "I don’t know. This could have been a classic failure to communicate. I just don’t know."
Documents showed that Mr Armitage met the Pakistani Ambassador and the visiting head of Pakistan’s military intelligence service in Washington on September 13, 2001. Mr Armitage, who has admitted being the source in the CIA leak inquiry, left office in 2005.
General Musharraf made the allegation in an interview with CBS television last night which is due to be broadcast in America on Sunday.
"The intelligence director told me that [Armitage] said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age’," he told CBS's "60 Minutes" programme. "I think it was a very rude remark."
Today General Musharraf declined to comment on the remark, saying, to laughter from the press corps, that he was bound to silence by his contract with Simon and Schuster, the publishing house. The President's memoir, In the Line of Fire, is published next week and will be serialised in The Times from Monday.
The controversy comes at the end of a week in which relations between the US and Pakistan have sharply deteriorated.
On Wednesday, Mr Bush, in an interview with CNN, said that he would not hesitate to authorise immediate American military action inside Pakistan if he had intelligence of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. Asked if he would give an order to kill the al-Qaeda leader, Mr Bush said "absolutely".
General Musharraf was clearly angered by Mr Bush’s declaration that the US would act independently of his authority inside Pakistan.
"We wouldn’t like to allow that. We would like to do that ourselves," he said. The President’s potentially incendiary claim of US threats comes at a particularly sensitive time between Washington and Islamabad, amid suspicion in Washington that Pakistan is not doing enough to curb a resurgent Taleban in Afghanistan, or in the hunt for bin Laden.
Before the 9/11 attacks Pakistan was one of the only countries in the world to maintain relations with the Taleban, which was harbouring bin Laden, and the Pakistani intelligence services had close relations with the Taleban regime.
In recent days Islamabad has vehemently denied US media reports that it has struck a deal with al-Qaeda and Taleban militants inside Pakistan, and even one report that it has assured bin Laden that if captured, he would not face prosecution.
General Musharraf denied those reports again today, describing a recent loya jirga, or meeting of the elders, between his Government and the tribes who live along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan as an agreement to fight the Taleban and al-Qaeda rather than a peace accord.
"The deal is not at all with the Taleban. This deal is against the Taliban. This deal is with the tribal elders," he said.
STRAINED DAYS
September 11, 2001. President Musharraf condemns attacks on the US as "brutal and horrible"
February 2002. On a visit to the White House Musharraf says: "We reject terrorism . . . we will continue to fulfill our responsibilities"
February 2004. Nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan accused of selling secrets. Musharraf denies knowledge of his activities
December 2004. Bush says Musharraf is "a person with whom I’ve worked very closely over the past four years"
