Playing down President Asif Ali Zardari’s remarks that Pakistan “created and nurtured” militants to achieve short-term objectives, the government here on Thursday said the statement should be seen in the context of the situation that prevailed after Soviet forces pulled out of Afghanistan.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said the President was referring to the period when the “West left Pakistan high and dry after the withdrawal of Soviet troops” from Afghanistan.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, Pakistan had been dealing with the “spill-over effects of the Afghan war”, Basit said in reply to a question about Zardari’s comments. He said there was a need to “transcend limited objectives” and to adopt a comprehensive and holistic approach to tackle issues and problems in the region.

During a meeting with former senior civil servants on Tuesday, Zardari had said that militants and extremists were “deliberately created and nurtured” in Pakistan as a policy to achieve “some short-term tactical objectives”.

“The terrorists of today were the heroes of yesteryear until 9/11 occurred and they began to haunt us as well,” he had said.

Earlier this week, Zardari said in an interview that military operations were required against militants who were considered as “strategic assets” in the past.

Meanwhile, the influential Dawn newspaper, in an editorial on Thursday, suggested that the military faced some hard choices.

“Perhaps more than anything else impeding the defeat of the militants today is the inability of the security establishment to revisit the strategic choices it made in the past and hold up its hand and admit candidly that grave mistakes were made,” it said.