Pakistan is determined not to let its territory be used as a launch pad for attacks by Islamic extremists, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in a speech in London on Friday.
Zardari took issue with the accusation that many of the terror plots unleashed against the world originated in Pakistan, but acknowledged that many “passed through” his country.
“We are determined not to allow anyone to use our territory against a third country,” he said in an address at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).
He said Pakistan was fighting the “mindset” that led to the planning of attacks against Western forces in Afghanistan and to the attack that killed his wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in Pakistan in December 2007.
“All I can say is that we are doing what we can. It is not something that can be done overnight,” Zardari said.
But the civilian government, by deposing the military-led administration of former president Pervez Musharraf, had “taken the initiative out of the terrorists’ hands.”
He called on the West to do more to support his government “to fight the militants.”
“We urge the world to provide us with law enforcement and counter-terrorism capabilities,” said Zardari, whose son Bilawal, a student at Oxford University, was watching his father from the front row at the IISS event.
The president said that after seeing his wife pay “the ultimate price” to establish democracy in Pakistan, he would do everything in his power to ensure democracy took root there.
“We have not come this far at this price, to fail,” he said.
India has claimed the attacks in Mumbai last November were masterminded from Pakistan, while three British Muslims were convicted this month of plotting to blow up transatlantic jets in a plot prosecutors said was directed from Pakistan.
In Pakistan itself on Friday, a suicide car bombing killed 33 people in Ustarzai, a small town in the northwest with a history of sectarian unrest.
Although his government is weak, Zardari is a key ally in US President Barack Obama’s strategy to defeat Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where 100,000 US and NATO troops are deployed.
In a sign of the opposition he faces, about 200 demonstrators protested outside the building where the speech was held, under a banner which said: “Remove Zardari to Save Pakistan.”
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