"Well, there are some people in uniform, junior level, ... Air Force and Army ... but they are very small," Musharraf said. In Geo TV’s talk show "Follow up with Fahd" at his Army House residence in Rawalpindi on Wednesday, General Musharraf said these personnel of the armed forces would be tried in a military court. The proceedings, he said, would be open.

The president was referring to the attempt on his life in December 2003 when a bridge on his route was blown up seconds after his motorcade passed over it. The December 14 attack was followed by twin suicide attacks on the president’s motorcade on December 25. The president escaped unhurt but a number of people were killed and injured in the attacks.

The president acknowledged for the first time that people from the armed forces were involved in the attacks. He said these personnel from the forces were motivated by greed. "(S)ome of them are not even for religious motivation, some of them are for money," he said.

According to Musharraf, the two assassination attempts were very well planned. "Because it was a complex operation ... people had to get explosives. Where do they get their explosives — they were all coming from the tribal areas, hundreds of kgs of explosives.
They came to Multan first, then they came to Islamabad, then they came to Jhanda Chichi here next to the bridge. And the technical methodology of plonking, planting these explosives on the bridge, preparing the vehicles for a suicide attack, then getting the people who will tell, who know my movement on the first, on the bridge case. When I landed from Chaklala, who probably saw me and then they informed that I’ve moved. So it was entirely a well planned operation, both of them on 14 December and the later one."

But the president said he was very sure no senior armed forces people were involved in the attempt on his life. "We have unearthed everything, we know exactly who is involved, we know the entire picture of both the actions, and exactly the names, we know their faces, we know their identities, we know their families, we know everything," he said.

Musharraf said those who were directly involved in the attacks were already under arrest, and those who had an indirect involvement were under watch, and may be picked up later. However, he said, the mastermind of the attacks, the person who actually planned them, was still at large. He said this person was a Pakistani and had been identified.

"The only persons still out there are the masterminds; one is the mastermind who thought of the idea, then the mastermind who planned. Now that man is still at large and we will get him," Musharraf said.

The president also talked about the new government in India and said he was hopeful that the peace process between Pakistan and India would remain on track. He said the new Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was extremely positive on the dialogue process when he talked to him on the phone. The president also said he had invited Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to visit Pakistan, although she had not reciprocated with an invitation for him.

The president said he had not talked to former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee since he lost the election, but said he intended to call him soon. On the controversy surrounding his uniform, the president remained non-committal, saying, "When the time comes we will cross the bridge."

When pressed on the issue, he reiterated: "We’ll decide, we’ll decide as I said there is time, let’s come to the time and then we’ll decide, make a decision, we’ll try to take the correct decision."

The president did not agree that the military operation in Wana had failed. "We know that there are twenty eight al-Qaeda operatives who were killed actually. We initially got this through an intercept during the operation that there was some Namaz-e-Janaza at night, but then even now one of the people, Nek Muhammad, who had surrendered said yes they buried about 25-28 people," he said.

Musharraf reserved the strongest words for the Commonwealth which re-admitted Pakistan as a member last week. He took exception to the statement by the Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon who had said the organisation would keep a close eye on Pakistan to monitor its move towards democracy. Musharraf said: "Well I am shocked at such a statement. Pakistan cannot be taken for granted, we are not a small state that he’s watching, that somebody is watching us and keeping an eye on us. We take a strong exception to this.

"We are a nation of one 50 million people, we are a very important nation of the Commonwealth. So if we are happy, I have said before, Commonwealth should also be very proud of having a country like Pakistan in their midst."

On Hudood laws, Musharraf said parliament should debate them without delay. He said these were man-made laws and should be reviewed thoroughly. He said he would pressure those who were exerting pressure on some members trying to table a resolution against these laws.

"The assembly must debate it. We must debate these in the assemblies and we must introduce a bill and we must rectify it," Musharraf said. "Whatever wrong, if at all there is a wrong to the minorities in the blasphemy bill, there is a wrong to women in Hudood bill we must rectify the wrong ... I would like to play a role, I am already doing it. I am telling everyone why don’t you debate it, let the bill be introduced and why don’t you start debating it, and come out, let us show this world that we are a progressive and enlightened people, we don’t mind discussions and debates."

Agencies add: More than two dozen suspects had been arrested over the two attempts on Musharraf’s life, an intelligence official said. Half of them were low-ranking military officials. Musharraf also quietly transferred one of his top generals in the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency after the second blast.

The official said the mastermind referred to by Musharraf was a former Islamic militant fighter from one of the several extremist organisations outlawed by Musharraf. He went underground last year.

"Police are searching for him. But he has eluded the hunt so far because he is no longer keeping in touch with his followers," the official, who could not be named, told AFP. The two suicide bombers were identified as Muhammad Jamil and Shafiq Ahmed, both Islamic militants who fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Indian rule in Kashmir.

Jamil was a member of Jaish-e-Muhammad, one of the fiercest guerrilla groups fighting Indian forces in Kashmir. Musharraf outlawed Jaish in January 2002. Jamil was captured while fighting alongside the Taliban and jailed in Afghanistan. He was released from an Afghan prison and repatriated to Pakistan just months before trying to kill Musharraf.

Shafiq was linked to Harkat Jihad-e-Islami, a militant outfit affiliated with the convicted mastermind of the abduction and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Sheikh was interrogated in February in connection with the Musharraf assassination attempts. Musharraf has previously accused the al-Qaeda network of masterminding the assassination plots.

An earlier attempt to kill Musharraf in April 2002 by blowing up a car bomb on a highway used by his motorcade in Karachi failed, as the detonator malfunctioned. Four Islamic militants were convicted and jailed last year over the botched plot.

They belonged to the hardcore network Harkatul Mujahideen al-Alami, who were also linked to a suicide car bomb attack outside the US consulate in June 2002 and Wednesday’s double car bomb attack near the US Consul General’s residence.

Musharraf said he was "200 percent sure" that no senior officers were involved in the plots. Separately, military spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan declined to say how many military personnel were being held or what they were charged with. But he said the number was "less than 10". "None of them is of officer rank — all of them are junior people," he said.

Shaukat said Musharraf had reiterated that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda had been the overall mastermind. But the spokesman said this did not mean al-Qaeda had infiltrated the military. "He did explain that there is a mastermind in al-Qaeda somewhere, some foreigner, and he is the mastermind who had recruited some local Pakistani who recruited the guys to work for him," Shaukat said. "So those people who were working for him, whether in the air force or army, might not have known exactly who they were working for."