Title: Pak not to yield to US pressure on India’s list: Musharraf
Author:  
Publication: Daily Excelsior
Date: Apr 01, 2002
URL: http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/02apr01/inter.htm#6

ISLAMABAD, Mar 31: Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has said his Government withstood the pressure from the United States to hand over 20 terrorists to India and Omar Sheikh, prime accused in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, to Washington.

Talking to newspaper editors and column writers here last night, Gen Musharraf denied that he had sold out to the US.

"Look, the US had also experted pressure on us to hand over the persons named by India in its list of 20, but I did not and then the US had wanted us to extradite Omar, but I did not, I am going to hold his trial inside the country and punish him for the crime he has committed in the country, he was quoted as saying by the Pakistan daily Dawn.

Gen Musharraf clarified Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar’s statement about US troops crossing over to Pakistan in pursuit of the Taliban and Al Qaeda members. "What the Foreign Minister had actually said was that the US has so far not made any such request, he said.

This, he said was misconstrued by some to mean that Pakistan has already given a green signal to the US soldiers in Afghanistan to cross over in to Pakistan in hot pursuit.

He said there was no reason why the US troops should enter Pakistan. "It will neither be in their own interest nor in our interest for them to do so."

The President also gave a clarification on reports of US Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel assisting Pakistani law enforcement agencies in raiding and capturing 52 terrorists in three Pakistani cities earlier this week.

"The only assistance that the FBI gave us was technical. They pointed out to us the houses in which these terrorists were hiding. The rest was done by our police, he added. (UNI)