LONDON, Dec 7 (AFP) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, speaking Tuesday during an official visit to Britain, urged US-led multinational forces to hasten their departure from Iraq by training local troops more quickly.
Musharraf told British lawmakers in the House of Commons that training Iraqis would provide an "exit strategy" for the foreign troops.
"It should speed up the process of raising the Iraqi security forces," he said. "They will allow an exit strategy."
The Pakistani general opposed the US- and British-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, but said his country would consider helping to train the Iraqi soldiers.
Musharraf has also said the world is now less safe because of the Iraq war and because of the way the US-led war on terror is being conducted.
He declined Tuesday to restate his views about the validity of the war to unseat Saddam Hussein, but said the world needed to focus on Iraq's current unrest and instability, and the effect this could have on its interim government.
"Abandoning them would create such instability that we won't be able to handle it then," he said.
Musharraf arrived in Britain Sunday after meeting US President George W. Bush in Washington.
After talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday, the two leaders said terrorism needed to be tackled both through military action and by removing "root causes" like poverty and political grievances.
Musharraf stressed during his visit in Britain, both alongside Blair and again before the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies on Tuesday, that the time was right to address deeper political problems that breed extremists.
"Palestine and Kashmir both are ripe for solving now," he said.
"Failure is no longer an option," he said, referring to the two territorial disputes. "For the sake of future generations and peace and harmony in the world today we have to act and we have to solve the political disputes."
Musharraf said his forces were stationed on the frontline of the anti-terror fight, with 20,000 soldiers in remote mountains battling remaining Al-Qaeda militants.
"We don't know where Osama bin Laden is," he told the crowd at the London think-tank, referring to the elusive Al-Qaeda leader thought to be hiding on the lawless frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"We know he is alive but we don't know where he is. But let there be no misconception that we are doing nothing else than following this man."
Musharraf's visit, ahead of a similar stop in Paris, has been dominated by issues of security and conflict resolution, notably regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Pakistan's conflict with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
In an interview he gave to the BBC on Monday during his stay, Musharraf -- a general who led a coup and seized power in 1999 -- said he thought the world was "absolutely" less safe because of the US-led war on terror.
"We are fighting it (terrorism) in its immediate context, but we are not fighting it in its strategic, long-term context," he told BBC television's "Newsnight" program.
12/07/2004 18:08 GMT - AFP