Former United States deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage admitted on Monday having "a very strong conversation" with Pakistan's intelligence chief after the September 11 attacks but denied threatening to bomb the country.
SEOUL: Former United States deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage admitted on Monday having "a very strong conversation" with Pakistan's intelligence chief after the September 11 attacks but denied threatening to bomb the country.
The conversation, aimed at getting Pakistan to drop support for the Taliban then ruling Afghanistan, was the day after the 2001 suicide plane attacks in the United States which killed nearly 3,000 people.
But Armitage repeated denials that he had threatened US bombing of Pakistan when he spoke to Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed, who was head of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency at the time.
"This conversation (on bombing) never happened," Armitage told a forum in Seoul, saying he believed the intelligence chief had given an "inflammatory" account of the exchange to President Pervez Musharraf.
"I had a very strong conversation with the intelligence chief," Armitage said in answer to a question at the forum. "I told him that for Americans this was a black and white issue. Pakistan was either with us or against us, that US-Pakistan history would begin on that day."
Armitage said he asked Ahmed to report back to Musharraf and come to see him the next day and that "if they agreed to help, then I would give them a list of requirements that were not negotiable.
"So it was a strong presentation."
Controversy over the strength of the message was unleashed by Musharraf's remarks in a television interview ahead of talks with US President George W. Bush.
Musharraf said he had been told that Armitage made the bombing threat to compel Islamabad to renounce its historic support for the Taliban, which was sheltering Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The Pakistani leader said his intelligence director told him Armitage had said: "Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age."
"I think it was a very rude remark," Musharraf said. Armitage said he had never made such remarks. "I was not authorized to tell the Pakistani visitor that I would bomb them."
"I have never in my life made any threat that I couldn't carry out. Since I wasn't authorized to make that threat, I didn't do it," he added.
Armitage went on: "I think that what President Musharraf said is, this is what his intelligence chief told him, not what I said to President Musharraf.
"I have no doubt the intelligence chief was quite inflammatory in the language he used to President Musharraf."
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