'The perception of Pakistan is very poor. We're misunderstood'

The media circus created to advertise his new memoir has drawn criticism even from some of his own aides, but President Pervez Musharraf insisted during a visit to New York this week that the whirlwind campaign had nothing to do with either his ego or with lining his own pockets.

The launch of his book, In the Line of Fire, conveniently coincided with a visit to the media capital of the world where he he found himself plunged into a promotional blitz of interviews and TV appearances. They included a stint on Comedy Central as the guest of Jon Stewart's satirical The Daily Show. "I think 99 per cent of everyone around me was saying I should not go on that show," Mr Musharraf acknowledged in an interview with The Independent.

The Pakistani leader was speaking on the eve of his visit yesterday to Britain, where his publisher, Simon & Schuster, has also toiled to gain exposure for the book. It had reached number four on Amazon's best-sellers list yesterday.

Noting that those who had gone before him to Stewart's lair included Bill Clinton, Mr Musharraf admitted he found himself in the hands of the publishers in New York and he would like "maximum publicity".

But he also suggested, rather vague terms, that he was in discussions about establishing a foundation in his own name "to contribute to women and the poor", to which he would dedicate the proceeds from the book.

He declared that the 340-page memoir - and the plugging of it - above all gives him the chance to improve the image of Pakistan abroad. "Pakistan is a misconceived country and the perception of it is very poor," he admitted inside a heavily protected suite on the 16th floor of a midtown Manhattan hotel. "I need to sell Pakistan and tell the truth."

The President, at times aggressively defensive, said his country was wrongly accused of failing its allies and of assisting the Taliban - a growing terrorist threat for which in recent days he has repeatedly blamed Afghanistan and its leader, Hamid Karzai. He also lingered on what he said was the West's habit of badmouthing Islam.

"It's high time that the world understood that the Muslims are 1.5 billion people. They have their own concerns - their own culture - and they are vastly moderate. Don't lump Muslims together and assume they are extremists."

Admitting that he finds himself distrusted even by his own allies - Mr Musharraf reacted angrily to news he had just received about a leaked paper by a Ministry of Defence think-tank researcher criticising Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, for covertly abetting the Taliban.

"I thought that the British were diplomatic, but I don't find this person, this individual, diplomatic at all," he barked, adding that the ISI had captured the man thought to have masterminded the recent alleged plot to bomb airliners bound from Britain to the US.

To anyone arguing that the ISI should be disbanded, he had stern words. "Who has the audacity to suggest this? Would I ever be in a position to suggest that you disband your MI6?" adding: "What right does anyone have to tell us to disband our ISI, which was the main organ which assisted in the defeat of the Soviet Union?"

He also ridiculed claims that the Taliban has its main base in Pakistan. But he warned that the regrouping of the Taliban represented "the worst thing that could happen today" in the struggle against terrorism, noting that its leaders were recruiting new fighters with monthly pay packets of $300. "The most dangerous thing that could happen is the Taliban movement becomes a people's war by ethnic Pashtuns," he said, referring to the group that represents roughly 50 per cent of Afghanistan's population. "I have been crying hoarse about it for three months."

He did concede that with many Pashtuns also residing in his frontier regions, the Taliban may be active in Pakistan. "I am not an unrealistic man. There is support in Pakistan." The difficulty, he added, was identifying moderate Pashtuns. "How do you deal with this situation? How do you distinguish these people?" His proposal to mine and fence the border with Afghanistan has been rejected, he said.

While his book criticises MI6 for withholding information from his government about the Pakistani origins of some of the perpetrators of the 7/7 London bombings, he said relations with were "much better now".

But he said he was troubled that Britain had emphasised the bombers' Pakistani connections. "As if all of their time lived in the UK was irrelevant and everything happened because they were in Pakistan for a month or two months."