PARIS, Jan 22: President Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday that it’s more important to battle the remnants of Afghanistan’s former Taliban militia than chase after top Al Qaeda leaders.

That Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are still at large “doesn’t mean much,” President Musharraf said in Paris while on an eight-day swing through Europe.

He suggested that those men — wanted the world over and whom he hasn’t been able to catch over the past six years — are less of a threat to his regime than the Taliban running roughshod over a part of his country.

“The 100,000 troops that we are using ... are not going around trying to locate Osama bin Laden and Zawahri, frankly,” the president told a conference at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris.

“They are operating against terrorists, and in the process, if we get them, we will deal with them, certainly.”

A top US ally in its war on terrorism, Musharraf has come under increasing pressure following the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto last month and for his brief declaration of emergency rule last year.

He insisted that the remnants of the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan were the “more serious issue,” for both countries.

But he nonetheless said there was “zero per cent chance” that Al Qaeda or the Taliban could defeat Pakistan’s 500,000-strong army or that militants could win control of the government in Feb 18 parliamentary elections.

As part of the “multi-pronged strategy” against terrorists, Pakistan has set up fences “selectively” and 1,000 checkpoints along the Afghan border in an effort to stop terrorists from using the areas to launch attacks, he said.

Musharraf credited cooperation between Pakistani intelligence services and the CIA, both of whom believe that militant leader Baitullah Mehsud was the mastermind of the Dec 27 gun and suicide attack that killed Ms Bhutto.

But in Washington, the US State Department’s counterterrorism chief, Dell Dailey, said the Bush administration was displeased with “gaps in intelligence” from Pakistan about Al Qaeda, the Taliban or foreign fighters.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also met President Musharraf on Tuesday, expressed support for Pakistan’s fight against extremists and promised to press for increased European Union aid for the country when France takes over the rotating EU presidency in July, Sarkozy’s office said.

Musharraf played down the impact of several recent attacks in the border region of South Waziristan, calling them “pinpricks” that his government must manage -- not a sign of a resurgent Taliban.

Attacks on military forts in the region over the last month have fanned concerns that militants may be gaining control in the rugged border area that US and Nato commanders say serves as the main staging area for cross-border infiltration by terrorists.

Despite turmoil at home, President Musharraf defended his eight-day trip through four European countries, saying that he wasn’t concerned about the stability of his military-backed regime while he was away.

“I can assure you that nothing will happen in Pakistan,” he said. “We are not a banana republic.”—AP