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Sharif Says Pakistan to Fight Terrorism on Own Terms

By admin | March 26, 2008

A partner in Pakistan’s new ruling coalition said the safety of its citizens will be a more important consideration than U.S. interests as it decides how to combat Islamic extremists.

“Pakistan cannot be made a killing field for the interests of others,” former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told reporters yesterday after meeting with U.S. government officials in Islamabad, the capital.

His comments are a signal that the coalition’s leaders will advocate a less confrontational approach to extremists than President Pervez Musharraf has pursued, said Marvin Weinbaum, a Pakistan specialist at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

The coalition government “has to be able to say to Pakistani public opinion that it’s not following the same course that Musharraf did,” said Weinbaum. “In the short term, they will look for other options” that likely will amount to “a less aggressive policy,” he said.

The U.S. officials yesterday held talks with the country’s new leadership on the same day that Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in 1999, swore in Yousuf Raza Gillani as prime minister two days after promising to support the government.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher met with Gillani, who will preside over the country under the guidance of a coalition that includes assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League.

`Fighting Extremists’

President George W. Bush congratulated Gillani by phone and said he “looks forward to working with him,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters. “The two leaders agreed that fighting extremists is in everyone’s interest.”

Sharif said,“Pakistan is no longer a one-man show” now that the new government is in place. “Since 9/11, all decisions were taken by one man. Now we have a sovereign parliament and everything will be debated in the parliament,” he told a televised news conference.

Musharraf, 64, has been a key U.S. ally against terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That relationship has prompted criticism at home and contributed to his backers’ loss in a parliamentary election on Feb. 18.

Terrorist Attacks

More than 2,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan as its forces battled militants last year. Many of the clashes have taken place in the tribal area bordering Afghanistan, where U.S. intelligence agencies say al-Qaeda has a base.

The new ruling coalition will take into account the unpopularity of the aggressive U.S.-driven campaign against terrorism, Marie Lall, Pakistan specialist at the London-based Chatham House foreign policy research group, said by telephone.

Asif Ali Zardari, 51, the PPP’s leader, has criticized Musharraf’s combination of peace deals and military action as ineffective, though also he favors using both tools, said Hassan Abbas, a former senior police official under Musharraf and Bhutto and now a Harvard University researcher. Sharif, 58, has said that Musharraf’s military offensives in the tribal regions have failed to crush militancy and a new approach is needed.

“The parliament has the mandate to review the policies of Musharraf,” said Sharif. “Musharraf used the war against terrorism to perpetuate his rule. If the U.S. wants to see its cities and towns free of terrorism, we don’t want to see our people being bombed.”

`Reassessing Relationship’

The visit by the U.S. officials “is about reassessing their relationship with the new government,” Lall said. “They need to start building a relationship with the people who are going to lead the country because Musharraf is being edged out.”

The U.S. “needs Pakistan a hell of a lot more than Pakistan needs the U.S.,” Lall said. The Bush administration needs “a workable relationship with the government, that’s why they’re there.”

Negroponte and Boucher used their talks “to reinforce with the new government that we look forward to working with them” and “broaden and deepen the political and economic reform process,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington. The American officials delivered a similar message to Zardari, according to a U.S. statement.

Musharraf told Negroponte Pakistan would continue to pursue a comprehensive strategy to counter terrorism, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

The European Union also welcomed Gillani’s swearing in. Slovenia, which holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc, described it in a statement as “an important step in the development of democracy, stability and security in Pakistan.”

`Ill-Equipped’

On the economy, the prime minister may be “ill-equipped” to address Pakistan’s budget deficit as he seeks to find common ground among the four coalition partners on such matters, Standard & Poor’s said in a report. Pakistan’s full-year budget deficit may widen to 6 percent of the gross domestic product because of stagnant revenue collection, large increases in debt service and subsidy costs, S&P said.

“The incoming administration faces the considerable challenge of arresting growing fiscal and external imbalances against deteriorating external conditions,” S&P said in a release yesterday. “A task Prime Minister Gillani may prove ill- equipped to handle, given an untested and potentially fractious cabinet.”

House Arrest

The new government has vowed to slash the powers that Musharraf shifted to the presidency during his eight-year rule, including the authority to dissolve parliament. Gillani emphasized his authority March 24 when he ordered the release of judges put under house arrest by the president in November.

Police complied with an order to remove barricades around the home of the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and allowed him to address a crowd of journalists and anti-Musharraf politicians and lawyers who gathered outside.

Musharraf’s ability to stay in office is linked to Chaudhry’s fate, analysts said. The coalition, in an agreement on March 9, vowed to reinstate Chaudhry and fellow judges within 30 days of taking power. Musharraf fired Chaudhry and other Supreme Court justices Nov. 3 as the court was preparing to rule on the legality of the president’s disputed October re-election.

The president, who quit as the army chief in November, said Dec. 12 that Chaudhry had been “illegally trying to remove me.”

Gillani, a former National Assembly speaker, was voted into office after he beat his rival Chaudhry Pervez Elahi of the former ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam, which is backed by Musharraf.

Speaking to the National Assembly immediately after the vote, Gillani declared that his election was “a victory for democracy and first I ask parliament to adopt a resolution to demand a United Nations probe” into Bhutto’s Dec. 27 assassination.

He was nominated for the premiership by the PPP, now led by Bhutto’s widower, Zardari. Musharraf in January rejected a demand by Zardari to order a UN probe into the killing.

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