This Sunday evening CBS’s 60 Minutes has what is promising to be an explosive interview with President Pervez Musharraf. Check out the tidbit they have leaked early:

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan tells Steve Kroft that after 9/11, the U.S. threatened to bomb his country if it didn’t help America’s war on terrorism.

Kroft’s interview with the Pakistani leader, in which he also discusses his embarrassment over his country’s nuclear secrets getting into the hands of other nations, will be broadcast Sunday, Sept. 24, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Musharraf says the threat came from then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was delivered to Musharraf’s intelligence director.

“The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,’ ” recalls Musharraf. It was insulting, he says. “I think it was a very rude remark.” But he reacted to it in a responsible way, he tells Kroft. “One has to think and take actions in the interests of the nation, and that’s what I did…” [Link]

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p>Geez. That Armitage seems to have a big mouth. I’m sure we all figured that Pakistan was strong-armed into turning on the Taliban (as well they should have been), but hearing that such stark language was used is almost as surprising as hearing Musharraf admit it. I’m not sure how this will go over with some in the home crowd. Musharraf also admits to his most embarrassing moment as President:

“(Tenet) took his briefcase out, passed me some papers. It was a centrifuge design with all its numbers and signatures of Pakistan. It was the most embarrassing moment,” Musharraf reveals. He learned then, he says, that not only were blueprints being given to Iran and North Korea, but the centrifuges themselves — the crucial technology needed to enrich uranium to weapons grade — were being passed to them. “(Khan) gave them centrifuge designs. He gave them centrifuge parts. He gave them centrifuges.”

Despite the fact that the military was guarding Khan’s nuclear facilities and the total amount of secret material sent from the lab was more than 18 tons, Musharraf denies anyone in the government or military had to know. [Link]

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p>Incidentally, Mr. Musharraf is stateside right now and just attended a conference with the likes of Bill Clinton and Laura Bush.

Mr. Musharraf took the lead as news-making head of state. He said “a lot of tensions in the Muslim world” were caused by the furor involving Pope Benedict XVI’s citation of a medieval text saying some of Muhammad’s teachings were “evil and inhuman.” Mr. Musharraf added that the pope’s remarks “were most unwarranted.”

“It is a time for interfaith harmony,” Mr. Musharraf said later in the conference session. No one has the right, he continued, “to hurt anybody else’s feelings, least of all at this time.”

Referring to Muslims, Mr. Musharraf added: “The world thinks that we don’t believe in democracy, we don’t believe in modernization, we don’t believe in secularism. Let me assure this house that Islam in theory believes in all of them.”

Mr. Musharraf also said the continued presence of American troops in Afghanistan was contributing to the resurgence of the Taliban and was intensifying instability there.

“They are coming back because of the presence of foreign troops,” he said. “There certainly is an antipathy to foreign presence in Afghanistan.”

The Pakistani leader emphasized that in his view, the conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian governments remained the greatest threat to security and political stability in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon.

“It lies at the core of everything,” he said. “We must not open new fronts — we must start closing fronts…” [Link]

Those are some wise words that he ends with.