Straight Talk Needed On Pakistan
The New York TimesEditorial
January 28, 2006
Pakistan's prime minister came to the White House this week and pretended that the people of Pakistan highly value their country's current close military relationship with the United States. President Bush reciprocated by pretending in his public comments that the American airstrikes that killed 18 Pakistani civilians earlier this month were not Topic A in that relationship. Even diplomacy requires more direct talk than this.
Those strikes were legitimately aimed at top fugitive leaders of Al Qaeda, but hit innocent women and children. Pakistan's people deserve a good explanation, and since they haven't heard one from their leaders, Mr. Bush should have provided it.
Washington needs a strong and healthy partnership with Pakistan if it is to have any chance of eliminating Qaeda's leaders, defeating a resurgent Taliban and turning back nuclear weapons proliferation. But strong and healthy partnerships are not built around political charades. And that is the only way to describe the events in Washington last week.
posted by Unknown | 7:32 AM
1 Comments:
In my opinion the most remarkable part of the editorial is the reference (though not by name) to the much reviled and exiled ex-Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto as being “real Prime Ministers” as opposed to Mr.
Aziz being “appointed by a military dictator”.
The core problem of legitimacy of both Mr. Aziz and his boss/ benefactor General Musharaf’s is raised in this editorial as a key risk for long-term U.S Pakistan relations.
Mr. Aziz rightly extols the virtues of transparency and integrity, however he has not quite walked his talk. He has participated in one of the most non-transparent political charades in Pakistan; i.e his extremely questionable and manipulated vault to the Prime Ministership. Does he really think anyone believes he has a popular political constituency in Tharparkar?
Regardless of how well-intentioned, respectable and skill full Mr. Aziz is; he cannot skirt this seminal issue of his legitimacy as Pakistan’s Prime Minister. For the moment, the powers that be in the international community are tolerating the Aziz/ Musharaf duo for the sake of political expediency.
No one, I believe, is fooled by the duo’s creative spin on democracy.
Since Mr. Aziz has requested that we also provide solutions, then I would recommend that if he really wants to do well by Pakistan and abide by principles of transparency, integrity and good governance; then he should seriously consider finding and promoting legitimately democratic ways of doing so.
Should Mr. Aziz ever chose to contest a legitimate, fair and free election in Pakistan..I might even consider voting for him.
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