White House denies it threatened to bomb ally Pakistan back to 'the Stone Age'
By Mark Silva
Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau

Amid reports that an American official threatened to bomb Pakistan back to "the Stone Age" if it didn't cooperate with the United States in the war on terror, the Bush administration said today that its policy was "not to make bombing threats."

Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, has told CNN that he never threatened Pakistan with bombing, but rather warned Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that he must be "with us or against us" in the war that the U.S. waged in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But Musharraf has told CBS' "60 Minutes" that the threat Armitage made to Pakistan's intelligence service at the time included both a bombing and a Stone Age destination.

"This could be a classic failure to communicate," Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said this morning, prior to a private meeting that President Bush and Musharraf were to hold in the White House. But this isn't likely to be the last word on this disputed communication; the two leaders plan a joint press availability in the East Room of the White House at 9:10 am CDT.

"U.S. policy was not to issue bombing threats," Snow said today. "U.S. policy was to say to President Musharraf, 'You need to make a choice.'"

"At the outset of the war in Afghanistan, the president did make a statement to President Musharraf: 'You're going to be with us or you're going to be against us,"' Snow said. "The fact is that President Musharraf has made a decision, and he put himself at risk (in supporting the U.S. in the region and also in facing repeated death threats from Al Qaeda.)…President Musharraf has put his life on the line fighting terror, and we're very grateful for what he's done."

The president this week did say that he would "absolutely" order an attack within Pakistan against Al Qaeda leaders if intelligence yielded operational support for a specific strike. Last week, he had said that he cannot deploy U.S. forces inside Pakistan because it is "a sovereign nation."

Musharraf, spending two weeks in the U.S. for meetings that started at the United Nations earlier this week, continued at the White House today and will meet with Bush and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai in the Oval Office on Wednesday evening. He spoke about the early warnings his country received from the U.S. in an interview to be aired Sunday on "60 Minutes."

Musharraf has told CBS that Armitage, then deputy to Secretary of State Colin Powell, had told Pakistan's intelligence director that the U.S. might attack.

"The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'" Musharraf has told CBS.

Calling the remark insulting, Musharraf maintained that he has acted responsibly in cooperating with the U.S. in the hunt for Al Qaeda and other terrorist operatives in his country. "One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that is what I did," Musharraf said in his interview.

While the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden are unknown, he is believed to be hiding along a largely lawless stretch of Pakistani-Afghan frontier, where about 100,000 Pakistani, U.S. and Afghan forces are hunting Al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Musharraf has been working with tribal leaders in the region in an attempt to get them to prevent foreign fighters from crossing the border, and Snow said the president will be inquiring about that effort in their meeting today.