Zardari: 'I Am a Victim Here'

President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan is in the hot seat. Under pressure from the international community, he ordered police last week to crack down on Jamaat-ul-Dawa, a charity thought to be the public front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group that India blames for the Thanksgiving attacks in Mumbai. President Zardari spoke with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth just before the Jamaat arrests. Excerpts:

Weymouth: It has been reported that Pakistan ' s Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] agency had links with Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] and that it shared intelligence with LeT on Kashmir. Do you believe that to be true?
Zardari: We are talking about an age-old situation. This is something [that happened] in the old days when dictators used to run the country. Maybe before 9/11, that may have been a position. [But] since then, things have changed to a great extent.

It is said that Lashkar is operating with the help of ISI now, not in the past.
There is no supportive interaction with our intelligence [agencies] and the LeT. Lashkar-e-Taiba happens to be a banned organization in Pakistan.

I remember how you and [your late wife] Benazir Bhutto felt about the ISI — and blamed it for causing many of your problems after she left her post as prime minister.
Yes, we've always maintained a certain position that the intelligence agencies [should] have nothing to do with politics. Since I have been in government, we've had a stated position that ISI has no political role anymore.

The problem is that long before you came to office, Lashkar-e-Taiba was used in Kashmir by the Pakistani Army to fight India.
That may have been the situation then, but things have changed. Lashkar-e-Taiba has been banned. Of course, these nonstate actors keep re-emerging in different forms. Whenever there is actionable intelligence, we move in before anyone else does.

I thought Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice demanded that you do something about the Mumbai bombing. Did she ask you to arrest some people?
She is a friend and she knows Pakistan is a responsible state, and the Americans and the British know how much my government has done for this operation … against the terrorists since we've been in government.

What do you think about the Mumbai attack?
I think it is horrific.

Reportedly, all of the terrorists were trained in Pakistan.
I don't have any specific information to that effect because the Indians have given us very little information. I have offered to the Indians that we will do a joint investigation into this Mumbai incident and if it leads anywhere, we will take action.

If the terrorists … were trained in Pakistan, don ' t you have to do something?
Definitely. Not for them, it's for myself … The Indians must understand that the government [of Pakistan] and the people of Pakistan are net losers of the situation. We had put in a lot of effort … to make good relations with India.