Musharraf calls Karzai an Ostrich

On the eve of the tripartite meeting between himself, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Bush at a White House Ifthar dinner hosted by Bush, President Pervez Musharraf slammed Karzai, describing him as "an ostrich," who doesn't want to tell the world about the real facts in Afghanistan "for his own personal reasons."

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, only hours after Karzai had described Musharraf as 'his brother President Musharraf,' in a joint press conference with Bush at the White House, Musharraf said, "He is not oblivious, he knows everything, but he is purposely denying -- turning a blind eye like an ostrich. He doesn't want to tell the world what is the fact for his own personal reasons. That is what I think."

Musharraf was responding to a question by Blitzer who said that in a March interview, Musharraf had said Karzai "...is totally oblivious to what is happening in his own country. "Blitzer asked him if he believed Karzai was still oblivious or whether he (Musharraf) owed him an apology.

Musharraf went on to say, "In the governance in Afghanistan there is a certain community, which is feeling alienated and it has 50-60 per cent representation in Afghanistan. That is his problem."

"He (Karzai) has to balance out and he has not been able to do that and therefore he is trying to hide that everything is happening from Pakistan," he added.

Musharraf warned, "This is a Pukhtun uprising by the people. If he doesn't understand this, he will keep going on and we are going to lose in Afghanistan."

Going by the tensions and the rhetoric that keeps exacerbating, President Bush will certainly have his work cut out in refereeing this contest on Wednesday over dinner and one wonders whether instead of breaking the Ramadan fast with the traditional dates, which precedes the Ifthar dinner, Musharraf and Karzai may end up flinging them at one another!