President General Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday rejected NATO security assessments that Taliban’s headquarters was in Quetta. “Anyone who says this is wrong. This is the most ridiculous statement,” he said, adding that Pakistan did not have financial resources to support the Taliban who, he said, were being financed by poppy growers. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations after the formal launch of his book ‘In The Line of Fire’, Musharraf said Afghan President Hamid Karzai didn’t understand the environment in his country and said that the Taliban could not be defeated only by force. He criticised Karzai for claiming that militants hiding in Pakistan’s tribal areas were behind the rise in violence in Afghanistan. “The sooner President Karzai understands his own country, the better,” Musharraf said, adding that the Afghan president was to be blamed for “disenfranchising” the Pushtoons, who make up a majority of the Afghan population.
However, Musharraf praised his Afghan counterpart as the best choice to lead Afghanistan as it rebuilds after decades of war. To a question, he said Pakistan was being made a scapegoat for the resurgence of the Taliban and the increase in their attacks in Afghanistan. “It is unfair that Karzai thinks all this is happening from Pakistan,” he said, claiming that Mulla Omar has not been in Pakistan since 1995, AFP reported. “It’s unfortunate that everything is blamed on Pakistan.”