Zardari: Mumbai Attack Targeted Pakistan, Too

Terrorists sought to impede country's peace process with India

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Dec 9, 2008 11:10 AM CST

(Newser) – Pakistan played no part in the Mumbai attacks, President Asif Ali Zardari writes in today’s New York Times, except perhaps as a co-victim. The attacks “were directed not only at India,” he writes, “but at Pakistan’s new democratic government and the peace process with India that we have initiated.” The atrocity painfully reminded Zardari of the attack on wife Benazir Bhutto last October, which killed nearly 150 Pakistanis; almost 2000 more have died this year alone.

These terrorists are connected by ideology, modeled after the religious extremists the “world worked to exploit against the Soviet Union,” and who have plagued Pakistan since. "The best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism," he writes. “We can identify with India’s pain. I feel this pain every time I look into the eyes of my children.”

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (2)]

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari waves to media in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, Dec. 5, 2008. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)

Protesters hold the Indian national flag and burn effigies of Asif Ali Zardari and the alleged mastermind of 1993 Mumbai bombings, gangster Dawood Ibrahim in Ahmadabad, India, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2008. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, is seen in a Friday, June 27, 2008 file photo in Ankara, Turkey. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

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The terrorist attacks in Mumbai may be a news story for most of the world.
For me it is a painful reality of shared experience. - Asif Ali Zardari

Not only are the terrorists not linked to the government of Pakistan in any way, we are their targets and we continue to be their victims. - Asif Ali Zardari

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Zardari: Mumbai Attack Targeted Pakistan, Too