US incursion will be regarded as invasion’

* President says foreign forces will not enter Pakistan unless invited * Says govt could not guarantee Bilawal’s security
* Benazir was brave
* Calls Hillary’s proposal an ‘intrusion’

SINGAPORE: President Pervez Musharraf has said any unilateral action by US-led coalition forces against militants in the border region with Afghanistan will be regarded as an invasion, a newspaper reported on Friday.

Musharraf told Singapore’s The Straits Times that Islamabad will resist any entry by coalition forces in the tribal areas, regarding that as a breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

“I challenge anybody coming into our mountains. They would regret the day. It’s not easy there,” he told the newspaper.

Nobody will come unless invited: “Nobody will come here until we ask them to come. And we haven’t asked them,” President Musharraf said.

He said if Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts were known, the methodology of action against him would be discussed. “We’ll attack the target together,” he said. “The United States seems to think that what our army cannot do, they can do, this is a very wrong perception,” Musharraf said.

Benazir was brave: Asked if he thought Benazir Bhutto was brave or foolhardy, he said, “Certainly she was brave.”

“When thousands of people are there to cheer you, you do get carried away,” he said. “But certainly I would say that getting out of the vehicle was an unwise thing to do.”

He said he couldn’t comment on whether she was hit by a bullet, but said it was a possibility. A large number of people were sending in mobile-phone photographs of the attack on Benazir Bhutto, he said, and that might help in investigation.

He said there were no rogue elements in the ISI. “If at all, with a stretch of the imagination, there is one odd person... who is following his own agenda, we’d trace him and remove him.”

Musharraf underscored the need for a political solution to the Afghanistan crisis, calling for talks with “senior elements within the Taleban who are for a negotiated political settlement”.

“I told President (Bill) Clinton, who was visiting Islamabad, that we should accept the reality (of the Taleban in power in Kabul), have diplomatic relations with them and then change them from within,” he said. “Had that happened, some things might have been different today.”

Bilawal’s security: The president said the government could not guarantee new Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s or his father and co-chairman Asif Zardari’s security. “There is no guarantee of security against a suicide bomber,” he said.

Hillary Clinton’s proposal: Musharraf also criticised US Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s proposal to deploy a US, and possibly a British, team to safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear assets as an “intrusion into our privacy, into our sensitivity...” agencies

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Aarwaa

Pakistan is ruled by three As - Army, America and Allah.