What Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte will tell President Bush is going to make him go red in the face. Bush is not used to changing his mind on any issue. On Iraq, he makes daily proclamations that things are improving and that the US will be victorious in the end. No one is buying his line. But we are digressing from the point. What is Bush’s stand on Pakistan? He wanted Musharraf as President and Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister to cozy up to each other and then fight the ‘bad guys’ (read Al Qaeda) together.
Bush’s Pakistan equation is in tatters today. Benazir is no more; and almost the whole of Pakistan wants Musharraf to go too (leave the president’s chair, I mean). But Bush is Bush. So, as the new PPP-PML (Nawaz) government was taking charge, he send his aide, Negroponte, to Pakistan. The idea was to tell the new ’sheriffs’ of Pakistan to lay off Musharraf, who also is a “good guy.” Also that the new government should keep up the fight against Al Qaeda.
But the messenger was in for a surprise. Negroponte was welcomed everywhere with much less warmth than he is used to. The Pakistani lawyers gave him an earful. The chairman of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, gave the American envoy a lecture on why an independent judiciary was important to fight terrorism. He wanted to convince Negroponte that the US should stop being so pro-Musharraf and drop their objections to the re-instatement of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhury.
He had also a tough time talking to Zardari and Nawaz Sharif. The US wants the new government to be tough on the militants, while the two Pakistani leaders favour talks with them. Negroponte had to concede that, “reconcilable elements” could be engaged in dialogue so that they “can be persuaded to participate in the democratic political process.”
The new Prime Minister, Gilani, said after meeting Negroponte that Parliament was now the supreme decision-making body. Pakistan supported its long alliance with the United States, but the fight against terrorism would be discussed in the legislature, he said. In other words Pakistan was not willing to be pushed around by the US like it was during Musharraf’s time.
It is to be seen what happens in the future but it is certain that the US will have to put in more effort in dealing with the new democratically elected government. The wise course for the US would be to stay quiet for now and see how things go in Pakistan.
