Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said his troops were really not hunting for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden but more focused on battling the Taliban and dimissed as “pinpricks” the rising militant attacks in his country.

“The 100,000 troops that we are using to fight terrorists... are not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahri, frankly,” Musharraf said at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris on Tuesday.

That Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are still at large “doesn’t mean much,” said Musharraf, who is in France on the second leg of his four-nation European tour.

The two most wanted men are believed to be hiding somewhere in the Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

“They (the troops) are operating against terroristsm and in the process, if we get them, we will deal with them, certainly,” Musharraf said in remarks suggesting it was more important to battle the Taliban.

Musharraf’s remarks came on a day when the U.S. State Department’s counter-terrorism chief, Dell Dailey said in Washington that the Bush administration was displeased about “gaps in intelligence” about militants in Pakistan’s border areas.

Musharraf asserted that he was not worried over the situation in Pakistan while he was away on a eight-day foreign tour.

“I can assure you that nothing will happen in Pakistan,” he said, adding, “We are not a banana republic.”
He categorically said that neither can Pakistan’s five lakh strong army face defeat at the hands of terrorists nor can the extremist groups win control of the government after next month’s elections.

There was “zero per cent chance” for this to happen, he added.

Touching upon the “multi-pronged strategy” to fight terrorists, the President said Pakistan has set up fences “selectively” and 1,000 checkpoints along the Afghan border in an effort to stop militants from using the areas to launch attacks.