NEW YORK: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, bristling at allegations his country harbors Taliban rebels, criticized Afghanistan's leader on Monday, saying he was failing to draw people away from militants.
Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who are due to meet President George W Bush on Wednesday, have been odds over Afghan accusations that Taliban leaders are running the insurgency from the city of Quetta in southwest Pakistan.
The Pakistani leader, promoting his new memoir in New York, called the allegations ridiculous and said Karzai's government needed to do more to end marginalization of ethnic Pushtun who form the main support base for the Taliban.
“The sooner Mr. President Karzai understands his own country's environment, the easier it will be for him,” Musharraf told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
He added, “I have always been saying that I believe President Karzai to be the right person to be president of Afghanistan.”
Musharraf said the coalition fighting the Taliban “must take immediate action to wean away the people” by spreading economic development and political representation to Pushtun areas.
“Don't let them join the Taliban and fight a people's war against you,” added Musharraf after a speech promoting his autobiography, In the Line of Fire.
In his book, Musharraf wrote that he thought Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was most likely to be close to his original base in southern Afghanistan, where NATO forces are facing fierce resistance from insurgents.
