By IANS
Washington/Islamabad : Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf could impose martial law and give himself two more years in power if his bid for re-election is blocked and not invite sanctions from the Bush administration, speculates an American expert.
“Even if (General Pervez) Musharraf imposes emergency or martial law, I don’t see the Bush administration taking any immediate action for may be another year or so,” Daniel Markey, who served in the Policy Planning Bureau of the State Department from 2003 to 2007 and is now a senior fellow on Pakistan, India and South Asia with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told The News.
The US may refrain from imposing sanctions if Musharraf seeks two years, and not five, to continue in power and the fight against terrorism, which is high on the American agenda, the newspaper said in a Washington-datelined report.
It quoted Musharraf telling the Pakistani community in New York way back in September 2002: “I have been elected for five years but if I could have seven years, a lot more could be done.”
In the most recent issue of the CFR magazine Foreign Affairs, Markey advised the Bush administration that “trying to force a rapid transition to democracy would be counterproductive”.
“The most recent US legislation asks the US president to give a yearly certification on the progress towards democracy as well as progress towards fighting international terrorism. In terms of priorities, democracy is a long-term goal of US (and it hasn’t been reached in Turkey in 80 years) while defeating Al Qaeda and Taliban is an immediate goal,” Markey said in his essay.
“Countering terrorism and violent extreme ideology is priority in our agenda with Pakistan,” Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 25, 2007 while adding that partnership with Pakistan is essential to support the US “long term goal” of establishing democracy.
No one in the State Department was willing to speculate on what future actions Musharraf might take and what would be the US response, the report said.
But officials and think-tank experts agreed that under the present circumstance, the US was in no position to impose any sanctions because that would also mean that it should pack its bags and leave Pakistan.
Markey told the newspaper that any drastic remedy by Musharraf would confront the Bush administration with “an extreme dilemma” in terms of choosing between its immediate objective of defeating terrorism on Pakistani soil and in neighbouring Afghanistan or choosing what the administration calls its “Freedom Agenda”.
Sanctions are not a practical choice at this time because “the US would like to continue intelligence and military partnership with Pakistan”, Markey said.
Markey and other State Department officials, who spoke off the record, expressed the hope that Musharraf would not take any steps that might derail the current political process under which everyone is expecting “fair and transparent” elections later this year.