Related: Musharraf: U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan after 9/11    

    WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President George W. Bush said Friday he was "taken aback" by a purported U.S. threat to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if it did not cooperate in the fight against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

    Speaking to reporters after his talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf at the White House, Bush said "I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words."

    Bush stopped short of flatly denying the report. Instead, he spoke highly of Musharraf's role in war against terrorism.

    Bush praised the Pakistani leader for being one of the first foreign leaders to come out after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to stand with the United States to "help root out an enemy."

    It was reported that Musharraf said on Thursday in an interview with CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" program that the United States threatened to bomb his country "back to the Stone Age" after the Sept. 11 attacks if he did not help America's war on terror.

    The threat was delivered by Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, to Musharraf's intelligence director, Musharraf told CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" program to be shown Sunday on CBS.

    "The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,'" Musharraf said in the interview to be shown Sunday on CBS.

    "I think it was a very rude remark," Musharraf said in the interview.

    It was reported that Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, disputed the language attributed to him but did not deny the message was a strong one. Enditem