By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : As a defiant Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf pressed on with his controversial plans for election under emergency rule, the US made an apparent bid to revive a power sharing deal with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte spoke to Bhutto on phone Friday shortly after landing in Islamabad “to hear from her a little bit how she viewed the political situation in Pakistan,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said here.
Negroponte, who is due to meet Musharraf Saturday, called Bhutto after a meeting with Musharraf’s national security adviser Tariq Aziz and “at least one foreign ambassador”.
He reiterated to Bhutto “… the importance of moderate forces working together in Pakistan for a better future for Pakistan and also to get Pakistan back on the pathway to constitutional rule,” he said.
Bhutto was released from house arrest in Lahore shortly before the second ranking US State department official began a visit to push Musharraf to end emergency rule, take off his army uniform and hold “free and fair” elections.
But an unpublicised item on the agenda of Negroponte, a former US intelligence chief, is apparently revival of a US-brokered deal gone sour between Musharraf and Bhutto, the two leaders Washington was banking on to take its key ally on a path of moderation.
Bhutto, who “was in Lahore, (is) possibly heading to Islamabad,” McCormack said without indicating whether, she would have a meeting with the highest-level US official to visit Pakistan since Musharraf’s Nov 3 crackdown, or the general.
Asked if Negroponte’s meeting with Aziz, who was also in London to broker the Musharraf-Bhutto deal, indicated an attempt to resurrect it, he said, “…that would be up to the two parties involved.”
“Now we know that prior to the imposition of the state of emergency they had come to some tentative agreement about how to move forward with a political deal that could have resulted in her becoming prime minister and President Musharraf remaining as president.
“We have been very up-front and very clear that we have encouraged moderate forces within the Pakistani political system, which would include former Prime Minister Bhutto, to work together for the kind of Pakistan that President Musharraf had envisioned for Pakistan prior to the state of emergency, and, in fact, have done a lot to try to achieve,” McCormack said.
The US “hope is for Pakistan and for the Pakistani people that Pakistan can resume that course,” he said. “In order to do that, it’s our assessment that those moderate forces within Pakistani political society are going to need to work together not only to get back to that point where you have constitutional democratic rule, but for the day after and the day after that.”
Negroponte’s conversation with Bhutto also “does send a very clear message that we intend to talk to and continue our contacts with members of Pakistani’s political leadership and political civil society,” McCormack said.
Asked to respond to criticism in Pakistan that US was interfering in its domestic politics, he said, “We have expressed our views, which we believe, are consistent with our national interest” in “the vein of counsel to a good friend.”
“So if people consider that interference in Pakistani politics, I don’t know that there’s much that I can do to try to combat those kinds of concerns,” McCormack said.
However, he held out an assurance that “whatever decisions Pakistan makes regarding its future, whatever decisions Pakistan’s leaders make regarding Pakistan’s future, of course, those are going to be for the Pakistani people to make and the Pakistani people alone.”
At the White House, spokesman Tony Fratto did not have much to add about Negroponte’s visit except, “He’s there; we hope to hear his take on his visit to Pakistan and we hope it’s successful.”
Meanwhile, senior Congressman Gary Ackerman has introduced a resolution in the US House of Representatives seeking suspension of military assistance as also sales and transfers of military equipment to Pakistan until restoration of legitimate civilian rule.
Ackerman, who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the West and South Asia, hit out at the Bush administration’s Pakistan policy, saying it has “for too long relied on one man to achieve our anti-terrorism objectives in Pakistan”.
The US has paid close to $10 billion to Pakistan in assistance, most of it military, since the Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attack. It has budgeted another $845 million in assistance in the fiscal year 2008 started Oct 1.