Author:
Publication: Sify News
Date: January 26, 2003
URL: http://headlines.sify.com/1592news1.html?headline=For~better,~for~worse:~US=~&~Pakistan~keep~marriage~going
Both partners insist all is well,
but the diplomatic marriage of convenience between Pakistan and the United
States is under serious strain, 16 months after it was consumated after
September 11.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid
Mahmud Kasuri visits Washington this week with relations as delicate as
at any time since President George W Bush strong- armed President Pervez
Musharraf into joining his anti-terror campaign.
Kasuri will meet Secretary of State
Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, among other
senior security officials.
He is angry at the inclusion of
Pakistan on a list of 20 nations whose citizens now face strict immigration
procedures in the United States, under new anti-terrorist precautions.
The foreign minister is also under
pressure from a rising tide of anti-US sentiment in Pakistan, fuelled by
demands from the main fundamentalist Islamic party for the expulsion of
FBI agents and US troops from the country.
Looming US military action against
Iraq has put Pakistan in a delicate spot, and it is concerned about the
domestic political fall out that would be triggered by an attack by its
anti-terror ally on a fellow Muslim nation.
Kasuri won't expect a free ride
from his hosts either. Leading figures in Congress have expressed extreme
concern about allegations, denied profusely by Musharraf, that Pakistan
aided a North Korean program to enrich uranium which triggered the current
nuclear crisis.
Senior US officials are also upping
the pressure on Pakistan to honor promises to stop militants crossing into
Kashmir.
Such calls earned US ambassador
to Pakistan Nancy Powell a stiff reprimand from the Pakistani Foreign Ministry
on Friday.
Tension has also simmered between
US troops and Pakistani agents and troops hunting down Taliban and al-Qaeda
remnants believed to be holed up in almost lawless Pakistani border areas.
But to hear top officials from both
sides talk you would think the relationship had never been better. "In
the past the relationship seemed to be a bit stuck in the mud, as it were,"
said Pakistan's new ambassador to the United States, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.
"It's had its ups and downs, it's
never been a problem-free relationship, but right now the prospect of significant
movement in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is
good."
Pakistan is desperate to that it
will not again by dropped like a jilted suitor by the United States in
favor of arch-rival India, once the anti-terror campaign ends.
Keen to keep Pakistan on side and
to avoid any action that could bolster Musharraf's fundamentalist opponents,
the State Department delivered another of its frequent verbal bouquets
this week.
"We deeply appreciate Pakistan's
cooperation. I think that's been a very positive and healthy cooperation
with us. We certainly believe that Pakistan remains a key ally in the war
on terrorism," said spokesman Richard Boucher.
But suspicions linger that the Bush
White House and its conservative supporters may in private be souring on
Musharraf.
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum
wrote in his new book "The Right Man" how the president was "enthusiastically
convinced" of Musharraf's suitability as an ally.
But following the murder of captured
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, the alleged Pakistani aid to
North Korea and other incidents, Bush was much more reluctant to praise
Musharraf.
