Osama’s asylum in Afghanistan — Musharraf offers to talk to Taliban

The military ruler, however, rejected the other American demands for making president Bill Clinton’s visit to Pakistan possible, the daily said. He refused to stop supporting militants in Kashmir, set a date for return of democracy to Pakistan or give up the right to first use of nuclear weapons, it said.

Musharraf also made it clear that he is in no hurry to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) too.

The paper quoted Musharraf as saying that if Clinton does not visit Pakistan during his forthcoming visit to South Asia, India could be encouraged to commit "aggression" against Pakistan or at least Indo-Pak tensions, which Clinton wants to ease, will rise. The Army ruler has admitted that the accountability process is not as fast as he desired, but there will be "no let up in our resolve", PTI reports from Islamabad.

"There will be no slackness in our resolve and nobody will be spared from accountability," he said in an interview to state-run PTV, the first part of which was telecast on Thursday night.

He said the first 25 or 26 corruption cases were in the final stages and would be sent to the courts soon. Once the courts began trial, other cases would be filed in courts, starting a cycle.

Simultaneously, the Government would continue to increase number of courts, he said.

Musharraf said people were drawing parallels between his government and martial laws in the past when a lot of activity was witnessed in the form of martial law administrators and military courts, but there were very few cases of bigwigs being nabbed.

"We need to bring about long-term, long-lasting structural changes to rehabilitate the system which is in decay…" he said. "We are heading towards structural change," Musharraf said citing the Federal Investigating Agency (FIA) was now probing white collar crime as well.

To improve governance, he said, his regime was concentrating on setting right the bureaucracy which was highly politicised. “I believe in democracy," Gen Musharraf has said. "Basically I believe in democracy. A democratic vision. The final decision is made by the leader, but this should come through a democratic process," he added.

Stating that true leadership to him was "people should love you and you should be able to motivate them. Then they will always be with you. It is the essence of leadership that you carry people along with you." He said it was a challenge and, "I like accepting challenges…but "arrogance and haughtiness are alien to my brain".