LAHORE, May 10: President Gen Pervez Musharraf said here on Tuesday that the government-PPP dialogue was an ‘ongoing process’ in which both the parties were interested Answering reporters’ questions after inaugurating a two-day conference on SME financing, the president said the government’s contacts with Benazir Bhutto’s PPP were ‘a normal thing’.

He described the government-PPP dialogue as a two-way traffic, and said: “It’s not that only we (the government) are interested in it; they (the PPP leadership) also want it. All moderate forces in the country should be encouraged and extremist forces curbed.”

The president laughed when his attention was drawn to a statement by Ms Bhutto that he (president) was aware of the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. “He is not in my pocket,” he said.

He dismissed questions about reported differences in the ruling coalition and said that it was “part of politics and there was nothing much to read into it”.

In his inaugural address at the conference organized by the State Bank of Pakistan, the president stressed the need for said channelizing economic growth for alleviating poverty and creating employment as these two factors were the “root cause of extremism and fundamentalism”.

“Apart from unresolved (international) political disputes, rampant poverty and unemployment are main factors contributing to fundamentalism and extremism. By alleviating poverty, we would be reinforcing the fight against terrorism,” he said.

The president gave a detailed overview of the efforts being made by the government for reducing poverty in both rural and urban areas and generating one million new jobs by 2007.

He said development the SMEs could play a critical role in generation of employment and reduction of poverty in the country. He said establishment of new industrial estates, as was being done in the Punjab, would encourage the SMEs to set up industry and generate jobs. He said the government was not interested only in earning wealth but also wanted its equitable distribution.