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K J M Varma in Islamabad
Pakistan described the evidence presented by the United States on Osama bin Laden's involvement in the September 11 attacks as impressive, and asked America to publicise it all over the world to enable people to make a fair judgement.
"The US should be confident that it has impressive evidence," Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said in an interview to CNN on Wednesday.
He said Pakistan would respect the conclusion reached by the US on the basis of the evidence, but at the same time would not 'sit on judgement' on the issue.
"We are hesitant to pronounce a judgement," Sattar said.
Sattar revealed Pakistan was shown 20 pages of documents, besides an oral presentation and his government was evaluating the evidence.
Stating that the US should publicise the evidence for the people of the world to see and evaluate it, he said people would be impressed by the good work done by the US.
Sattar said, "We really respect the judgement made by the US, but once again request US to please publicise this information for the benefit of the world community."
"Of course, we are not saying that this should be taken to a court of law as that is for US to decide," he said.
He added, "We apprehend that if the world community is not made aware of this information they will not be convinced that the action that is taken is justified."
"We in Pakistan are particularly concerned about this issue (of making the evidence public) because there is segment of public on our country, which has extremist tendencies and they would exploit the absence of information in order to mislead people. We have vested interest that this information should be publicised. There is no harm in making the information and evidence public," Sattar told CNN.
On the possibility of the evidence being 'fabricated', Sattar said those who say this were in a small minority and they had pre-conceived ideas.
"They have already made up their minds and will not accept any evidence," he said.
The US for the first time provided material and documentary evidence to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday.
The material provided by the US was reportedly discussed at a joint meet of the Cabinet and National Security Council held on Wednesday.
The Attack on America: The Complete Coverage
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External Link: For further coverage, please visit www.saja.org/roundupsept11.html
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