Bush, Musharraf duck 'US bomb threat'

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf on Friday celebrated their close cooperation in the war on terrorism but did not deny that it began with a US threat to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age.

In a joint appearance after talks at the White House, Musharraf assured Bush that a peace treaty with tribal elders near the Afghan border would not take pressure off Afghanistan's Islamist Taliban militia or their terrorist allies.

And Bush refused to say whether he would seek Pakistan's permission to strike inside its territory at Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, which carried out the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.   

Musharraf made White House history when he invoked a book deal with a major US publishing house to keep silent on his earlier charge, in an interview with CBS television, that a senior US official had threatened to bomb Pakistan in order to force Islamabad to meet US demands after the September 11 strikes.

"I am launching my book on the 25th, and I am honour-bound to Simon and Schuster not to comment on the book before that day," he said, sparking incredulous laughter among reporters and relieved chuckling from Bush.

"In other words, 'buy the book,' is what he's saying," joked the US leader, who said that he had just learned of the allegation on Friday in a newspaper and was "taken aback by the harshness of the words."

"I don't know of any conversation that was reported in the newspaper like that. I just don't know about it," said Bush. 

The US official who supposedly made the remark, former deputy US secretary of state Richard Armitage, flatly denied saying any such thing, declaring in an interview with CNN: "Never did I threaten to use any military force."

"I was not authorized to," added Armitage, who did confirm he made a series of non-negotiable demands on Pakistan in a bid to secure its cooperation in the US assault on Afghanistan's then Taliban leaders.