President Musharraf has accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who blamed Islamabad for the Taliban’s resurgence, and the West of making his country a “scapegoat”. “Pakistan is being maligned by the West because of total lack of understanding of the environment and reality by President Karzai,” Mushrraf told America’s CBS channel in an interview on Friday, referring to the Afghan President’s accusation that Taliban leader Mullah Omar is hiding in Quetta. “He (Mullah Omar) is in south of Afghanistan somewhere—he is not in Pakistan, although President Karzai and everyone keeps saying he is in Quetta. “.Absolute total nonsense.He has never been in Pakistan.they are trying to make a scapegoat of Pakistan and we don’t like that at all,” Musharraf said. Maintaining Pakistan is pursuing the right strategy to fight terror, he said: “Even if we are succeeding 20 per cent, 30 per cent.the direction is correct, end goal is correct, strategy is correct.” He ruled out a joint US-Pakistan military operation to flush out insurgents hiding in Pakistan, saying “the whole population of Pakistan will rise against it”. When asked why US, Pakistan and Afghanistan have not been able to trace terrorists despite sharing intelligence, he said: “We are trying to locate them by all possible means and we are not being able to.They are in the mountains and we do not know whether they are in Afghanistan or on our side, and they keep moving.”
