By IANS
New York : Losing faith in Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s ability to survive in office for long, the US has started discussing what might come next.
Officials at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon met Wednesday to decide what message Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte should deliver to Musharraf – and to Pakistan’s generals – when he reaches Islamabad Friday, The New York Times reported Thursday.
With chances of a deal between Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto evaporating, more and more senior administration officials in Washington are coming around to the view that the US should begin considering contingency plans, including reaching out to Pakistan’s generals.
While the Bush administration does not want to give the impression that the US was orchestrating installation of the next leader of Pakistan or engineering another military coup, it now sees Musharraf as the problem not the solution, according to the report.
This shift in perception was significant because for six years he has managed to portray himself as the West’s best alternative to a possible takeover in Pakistan by radical Islamists, the newspaper said.
US officials, however, see little prospect of an Islamic takeover were Musharraf to fall because they acknowledge that the Pakistani army remains a powerful force for stability in that country.
The report quotes them as saying that if Musharraf is forced out of power, it would most likely be through a gentle push by fellow army officers, who would try to install a civilian president and push for elections to produce the next prime minister, perhaps even Bhutto, despite past antagonism between her and the military.
Many western diplomats in Islamabad have expressed the view that even an imperfect arrangement like that one was ultimately better than an oppressive and unpopular military dictatorship under Musharraf, the paper said.
But the diplomats speaking to the Times also warned that removing him might not be that easy as army generals are unlikely to move against Musharraf unless certain “red lines” were crossed, such as countrywide political protests or a real threat of a cut-off of American military aid to Pakistan.
Washington is concerned that the longer Pakistan’s constitutional crisis lasts, the more diverted its army would be from the task given to it by the US of fighting terrorism in the country’s border areas.