Musharraf seeks covert US support to regain power

ISLAMABAD: In a leaked video, retired General Pervez Musharraf, the former Pakistani dictator, was purportedly seen seeking covert US support to regain power and telling American lawmakers that he was “ashamed” that an agency was negligent about the al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts.

The undated video clips, which have been posted by a dissident Pakistani columnist also shows the self-exiled former president as saying that he thinks that the negligence of the agency was “pardonable” as the CIA was also involved in same level of negligence on 9/11.

General (R) Musharraf, 75, has been living in Dubai since March 2016 after he left for medical treatment and has not returned since, citing security and health reasons.

He is facing the treason case for suspending the Constitution in 2007, a punishable offence for which he was indicted in 2014. “All I am saying is I have certain credentials from the past. I need to come (to power) again, and I need to be supported. Not overtly, but in a covert manner. So that we win again,” Musharraf can be heard telling US lawmakers in one of the leaked videos of the meeting. When posed with tough questions, he ruled that US lawmakers “are too involved in minor tactics”. He also claimed that Pakistan used the money given by the US for fight against terrorist to bring down the poverty from 34 percent to 17 percent. To which, those present in the meeting were quick to point out that none of the US Congress members voted for $20 billion aid to Pakistan in the last 10 years because of poverty.

Money was given to Pakistan to defeat al-Qaeda and Taliban, the lawmakers said, to which the former Pakistan president sought the US to help him get back to power. In the first video clip, he is seen walking in the corridors of the US House of Representatives. The video clips seem to be from 2012 after he was ousted from power.

In the third segment of the clip, Musharraf is seen in conversation with a lobbyist and chairman of the powerful American Jewish Congress Jack Rosen during an informal get-together. One of those present in that meeting was Congressman Gary Ackerman. He argues that there was no complicity in Pakistan not being able to find out Osama bin-Laden.

"There are aspersions against Pakistan of hiding Osama bin Laden,” Musharraf says in his meeting with US Congressmen. Musharraf himself raised a question if the US was against Pakistan, or annoyed with the establishment and the agency, because they believe there was complicity. Then he himself replied that in his view there was no complicity. “There was negligence. And we are all ashamed. Even, I, though I am not in the government now, I am ashamed that there was this level of negligence by the [agency] that we did not know.

“I think negligence is pardonable,” he said, adding that the CIA was also involved in same level of negligence on 9/11. Referring to the 18 people being trained in the US, Musharraf alleged that CIA being such a big organisation was sleeping, adding that the agency was also sleeping. “Let's leave it at that," he said.