Q&A Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf knows how to make a splash with a book tour. In the week that his new memoir, In the Line of Fire, hit stores, the Pakistani President feuded publicly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, had tea and Twinkies on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, ate dinner at the White House, and was greeted in London by Tony Blair and a leaked British defense document accusing Pakistan's intelligence agency of having ties to al-Qaeda. Somehow, he also managed to squeeze in a chat with TIME in New York.

The Afghan government says Pakistan is responsible for the resurgence of the Taliban.

The U.N. Secretary-General's report says that the foot soldiers of the insurgency are Afghans. I've been saying that for the last three months, even though President Karzai and everyone else says they're from Pakistan. Today Karzai said [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar is in Quetta. This is a ridiculous assertion. Mullah Omar has never come to Quetta. Not since 1995 has he come to Pakistan. He is based in Kandahar and is still there.

There have been recent reports that Osama bin Laden may have died. Do you believe them?

I have no such information. I spoke to my intelligence chief, and he did not substantiate this point.

Do you believe bin Laden is in Pakistan?

These are things that agitate me. I could say he could be in any country. But I never say that because I don't know. We have excellent intelligence sources, so if we don't know where he is, I don't know how anyone else knows. We don't know where he is. We are guessing.

If you sent in a larger number of forces, would you have a better chance of finding him?

We'll go anywhere if we have any indication that he is there. We are trying to look for him. But we're dealing with mountainous areas. There are no roads. These are fiercely independent people--they are all armed, everyone carrying a weapon. This is the kind of terrain we're dealing with. It's not easy.