Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf [Images] has said he could not allow Indian soldiers to carry out relief work in quake affected Pak-occupied Kashmir as his country's "whole defence system and the military is there".

"The world should understand that we cannot allow Indian soldiers to operate in (Pakistan-occupied) Kashmir. Our whole defence system is there, our whole military is there," Musharraf said in an interview to the Financial Times.

• Quake hits North India

He conceded that some of the Islamist groups, currently on watch-list, such as Jamaat-ul-Dawa and Al Rasheed Trust were providing relief in PoK and his government must "beat them to it".

Musharraf confidently rated his government's performance as "good to very good", but admitted that he was battling to assert his administrative competence in the face of stiff competition from militant Islamist groups that oppose the peace process, and from the Indian government.

Recalling his experience of the earthquake, the president said his first instinct was to run upstairs to help his mother in his Rawalpindi home. "She walks slowly and by the time I had got her to the door, the earthquake was over," he said.