Pakistan's New Leader Denies Firefight as Mullen Confirms It

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 27, 2008

NEW YORK, Sept. 26 -- Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday denied that American and Pakistani forces exchanged fire along the Afghanistan border this week, even as the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged that the two sides engaged in a brief firefight.

Zardari told The Washington Post in an interview Friday that Pakistani border forces shot warning flares Thursday at two U.S. helicopters that he believes inadvertently crossed into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan. He said there was no gunfire exchanged between the two sides.

"We fired flares at them," he said.

Zardari spoke at about the time that Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Washington that Pakistani forces fired on two U.S. helicopters supporting a ground unit Thursday and that American troops responded with small-arms fire.

"There was a cross-border fire incident yesterday," Mullen said, corroborating reports from U.S and NATO military officials. He urged both sides not to "overreact to the hair-trigger tension we are all feeling. Now, more than ever, is a time for teamwork, for calm."

One day after blasting the United States for violating Pakistani territory in a speech before the U.N. General Assembly, Pakistan's new leader sought to defuse tensions between the two countries and present Pakistan to the American public as a reliable ally in the U.S.-led fight against terrorism.

Zardari played down the significance of American incursions into Pakistan in recent weeks, referring to a Sept. 3 operation that led Pakistan to accuse U.S. commandos of killing 20 people in a South Waziristan village as a "one-off" incident.

He praised President Bush's leadership in the fight against terrorism. "Obviously, the world is a safer place," he said. "It could have been worse."

At the same time, Zardari warned that "the axis of evil is growing." He cited last Saturday's massive bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which killed more than 50 people, and pressed the Bush administration to step up intelligence cooperation with Pakistan to help confront Islamist militants.

"God has given us the opportunity to do the job," he said. "I think Pakistan has the right credentials and I have the right credentials and strength to face them. I've been through a tough life . . . and that tough life has prepared me to become even tougher."

Pakistan's fledgling democratic government received a show of support Friday at the United Nations from a coalition of countries -- called the Friends of Pakistan and led by the United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates -- that pledged economic aid and political support to help the government in the struggle against terrorism.

"We know that Pakistan has many challenges in security, in the economy and in bringing stability to this young democracy," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday ."The international community will be there by their side as they make difficult decisions."

The Bush administration has been pressing Pakistan for years to crack down on Islamist fighters in western Pakistan, which U.S. officials consider the most deadly new front in the fight against terrorism and a source of danger to U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. They also believe that Pakistan is too sympathetic to Afghanistan's Taliban fighters, who have escalated their war against that nation's government, the United States and its allies. According to the U.S. military, 30 to 40 percent of all attacks in Afghanistan are carried out by extremists operating out of Pakistan.

Zardari discussed a plan to persuade Afghan farmers to plant corn instead of opium to take advantage of rising prices sparked by the burgeoning U.S. ethanol industry. "We can try to grow corn in Afghanistan and give them the same returns they're getting from opium," he said.

Seated near a photograph of his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated in December, Zardari said he has asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into her slaying. But he said he is less interested in holding the killers to account than having the United Nations produce an exhaustive document that recognizes his wife's democratic crusade in the face of Islamist extremism.

"I'm not looking to hang three 17-year-olds who were misguided by someone," he said. "We are fighting for a cause that is larger than us."

Zardari reaffirmed Pakistan's position that it should take the lead in battling terrorism. "This side of the border is my problem," Zardari said, adding that if U.S. forces need "permission of sorts" to cross the border, "we can have an understanding on that, but they haven't asked for it."

"If we need help, we call for them. If they need help, they call for us," he added. If the United States has security concerns in Pakistan, "let us know. We'll do it for them."

Zardari said he welcomed U.S. support in bolstering his country's ability to patrol Pakistan's porous border with Afghanistan. He also appealed for help confronting an insurgency that has grown increasingly bold in recent months.

"They keep coming up with new ways of war," he said referring to the Marriott Hotel attack. "Obviously, the problem has not gone away, so the medicine needs to be enhanced."

Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson in Washington contributed to this report.