Indian Army chief backs his Pakistani counterpart

Published in IBN Live on Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 11:12, Updated at Sat, Feb 23, 2008 in Nation section

New Delhi: Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor has said that with the elections over in Pakistan, India's security establishment hopes that it will lead to an improvement in the security situation vis-a-vis Pakistan.
"With the elections having now taken place, I think, the security situation as far as Pakistan is concerned - if it gets stabilised - should improve. When the things were turbulent, we were a little worried that some of the extremists may want to infiltrate and we were very vigilant on the borders. But now that the elections have taken place, and hopefully in next few days they would have a government being formed, we would be able to talk to a democratically elected government to resolve some of our outstanding differences with them," General Kapoor said.
General Kapoor also said that it was reassuring to have a professional soldier as the head of the Pakistan Army.
"I think General Ashfaq Kayani is a professional soldier, and he has gone through the mill - so to say, and come up as a capable officer. I think he would be able to handle the Pakistan Army professionally," the General said in an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN's Karan Thapar.
Karan Thapar: So in a sense he is a reassuring presence at the top of the Pakistani Army?
General Deepak Kapoor: Some of the measures that he has taken - I think it is reassuring to have a person who is a professional soldier as the head of the army.

Certifying Pakistani Army Chief as a professional solider isn't saying much. Would not Mushraff too have been certified as such? How did he turn out?