•Minor tactics, that’s a very fauji expression.

Small tactics. My reaction was, ‘General, you are a man of the army. Naturally, your thinking is on the lines of what is the right strategy, what are the right tactics. I’m a man who has been in public life, and I can tell you that it’s not a small thing. The day Gen Musharraf decides to hand over Dawood to India, every citizen in the country will start thinking, “For the first time, Pakistan has a leader who is totally different from the earlier leaders.” You cannot imagine how you will touch the chord of every Indian.’

•Did you find him capable of thinking big, thinking out of the box.

No, by that time he had recollected himself, and said with a straight face, ‘Well, Mr Advani, let me tell you, Dawood is not in Pakistan.’ I didn’t pursue it. That was not the idea.

•You saw Musharraf from close then. I bet you got a lot of insight, understanding, on him, at least from people who keep track of such things, when you were in government. And you’ve seen him subsequently. Describe him in two sentences, one, what do you find remarkably good about him, and two, what do you find remarkably disappointing about him.

I would say that he’s not a fundamentalist. But he has an obsession that, as leader of Pakistan, he has to take back Kashmir. His obsession is with Kashmir. It’s still there. It’s still there because even after the January 2004 joint statement with Pakistan, made with Vajpayee, I see no attempt being made to undo the infrastructure of terrorism that has been created. That’s still there, and that is kept as a kind of a reserve.

... contd.