Out of step with the US again

Columnist SULTAN AHMED says that there is now a distance between the US and Pakistan.

Pakistan which has been under several layers of US sanctions appears to be losing US sympathy or support further, and rather needlessly or tactlessly.

We have the pre-nuclear explosion military and economic sanctions which began in 1990 when the Pressler Amendment came into full force, the post nuclear explosion sanctions, and after military take-over sanctions which began in October, 1999.

It appeared the heavily clouded horizon was getting brighter and the post-nuclear explosion sanctions were easing off. Even the military sanctions were being partially lifted to enable the Pakistan army contingent going to Sierra Leone for its UN peace-keeping operations receive the US arms it needed. And following the coming easing of the sanctions against India in view of the cosy relations developing between them, the sanctions against Pakistan too were to erode.

The visit of Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar was to come as a climax to such happy developments or trends. And it seemed the visit on June 19 went very well, particularly the meeting between the Foreign Minister and the US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had invited him to the US capital. American officials appeared pretty pleased with Sattar’s talk on the “rehabilitation of democracy in Pakistan”.

But Sattar did not tell Colin Powell that Gen. Pervez Musharraf was becoming President of Pakistan the next day. And Powell felt misled or deceived. The next day Sattar did discuss the issue with Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, who reportedly said the US was “distressed by the decision.”

The State Department also said the dissolution of the assemblies and assumption of presidency by Gen. Musharraf “severely undermined Pakistan’s constitutional order.”

It appears that Sattar did not wilfully mislead the US Secretary of State but was not in the know of the Gen. Musharraf’s decision to assume the mantle of the top office in the country on June 20 when he met him.

There is a loud chorus of disapproval of the general’s action in the Western world. The British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has expressed himself strongly against it and the European Union has disapproved that. And the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Dom Mackinnon has protested. The first country to hail that is India with its all-out approach to please Gen. Musharraf personally. In view of the forthcoming summit India has reversed its stern approach to the military regime in Pakistan absolutely, at least outwardly.

It has now been announced by Gen. Musharraf’s Press Secretary and Director-General of Inter. Services Public Relations Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi that he will be in office for five years, like any formally elected President. Meanwhile, the elections to the national and provincial assemblies are to take place 16 months from now. What thereafter? Will Gen. Musharraf contest the presidential elections using the newly elected national and provincial assemblies and the Senate which are the constituencies for the presidential elections?

Or will he seek a vote of confidence from these legislatures at a joint session or separately? Or will he follow the examples of his military predecessors, Gen. Ayub Khan and Gen. Ziaul Haq, and seek a referendum before the October, 2002, general elections? His quest for legitimacy will be really no different from that of those military rulers.

Whatever be the course he adopts now the big powers are not accustomed to be kept in the dark in the manner Pakistan has done with the US. The fault clearly is not of the Foreign Minister but of the military system which takes snap decisions and implements them forthwith. That is how they have been trained to do in the military field where the enemy has to be taken by surprise all the time, our-foxed and outmanoeuvred.

But we can’t afford to treat big powers like that, certainly not the lone super power in the world accustomed to receive excess homage from Pakistan historically. When we are seeking so much of economic and political support from the US and have made ourselves dependent on the US excessively for a great many things, we cannot afford to take the US by such unpleasant surprises.

In his testimony before the US Senate, prior to this confirmation, Colin Powell said the American effort to strike a balance between India and Pakistan was a “delicate process”. He said while the peace-keeping potential of India should be assisted by the US, it should “not neglect our friends in Pakistan.” That means we have to be careful in cultivating our relations and strengthening our cooperation with the US instead of being too syrupy in our comments on US- Pakistan relations at times and hamhanded at other times.

Some Pakistanis feel sore that while Richard Armitage went to India to consult Indian leaders on the controversial national missile defence shield of the US, no one was sent to Pakistan, although Pakistan is now a proven nuclear power. No one came from Washington to discuss the issue despite the fact that Pakistan is not in favour of the missile shield, as is much of the world, particularly Europe, not to talk of China and the Russian Federation.

If the US sanctions against India ease off, as it did after the first nuclear explosion of India in 1974, and Pakistan is still under that blanket of sanctions, that will be too bad for us. Pakistan’s economy is weaker than India’s and we need external assistance and foreign investment far more than India which has a foreign exchange reserve close to 40 billion dollars.

Gen. Qureshi says that Gen. Musharraf’s elevation as President is not the outcome of a sudden decision and the military leadership had been considering that for three months. So Colin Powell would have liked to be told when Sattar met him that next day Gen. Musharraf would be becoming President of Pakistan, particularly while they were discussing Pakistan’s efforts to rehabilitate democracy in detail.

It is possible the generals in Pakistan did not want to tell the Americans or other world leaders in advance for fear they might object and term it an anti-democratic step or raise too many questions. Hence they decided to confront the world with a fiat accompli which cannot be reversed, however, strong the external opposition.

The generals felt they were on firm ground as the Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Irhas Wasan Khan himself would be administering the oath to Gen. Musharraf. And he is the same justice who upheld the military take-over of October 12, 1999, in his landmark judgement and authorised him to amend the constitution as well, without altering its basic structure.

That also upsets the Western powers committed to democracy and separation of powers where the judiciary stands apart from the legislature and the executive and decides all major issues on merit, and merit alone.

Gen. Musharraf has also done away with the Senate along with the national and provincial assemblies. The Senate is a permanent body which stays while other legislative bodies are dissolved, but now that too has been dissolved, like other assemblies. Former Chief  Justice of Pakistan Justice Saiduzzaman Siddiqi had disapproved of that, and says that is the outcome of the Provisional Constitution at work, and not the suspended 1973 constitution.

The fact is that if the Senate had been allowed to be there the Senate Chairman Wasim Sajjad should be acting as President in the absence of Gen. Musharraf from the country since Rafiq Tarar is not there to hold the fort. He never left the country after October 12, 1999, and for that matter hardly ever earlier as well as President of Pakistan.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan will now be acting as the President in the absence of Gen Musharraf, in the manner the Provincial Chief Justices are acting as Governors in the absence of the Governors. This coalition of the army and the judiciary is not a happy development, and impairs the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary at the higher levels.

But then the judges could argue that after upholding the military take-over and giving Gen. Musharraf the right to amend the Constitution until the elections are held by October, 2002, the superior judiciary has to go along with the ruling military set up.

All that has not prevented two petitions being filed in the Lahore and Punjab High Courts against the assumption of the presidential office by Gen. Musharraf. Mian Mohammad Hanif Tahir, General Secretary of the People Lawyers Forum, who filed one of the petitions, wants action against Gen. Musharraf on charge of treason under Article 6 of the 1973 Constitution. The outcome of the petitions remains to be seen. But since the Chief Justice of Pakistan has upheld the military take-over, and the provisional constitution, and administered the oath to Gen. Musharraf the high court judges may not regard it prudent to cut across his verdict.

Many are asking why did the generals create or promote the like-minded Muslim League so blatantly if this is the course of action they would finally follow. Why was Mian Azhar and his allies suddenly raised from political dust, and leaders like Begum Abida Hussain made to join them if they had to be suddenly abandoned in this manner, and the generals follow their unilateral course? The like-minded Leaguers have been paid dearly for their mindlessness and letting themselves be used by the officialdom. That should be lesson for other politicians as well.

It has been said it was necessary for Gen. Musharraf to do what he has done. He cannot go to India as the Chief Executive of Pakistan and negotiate a deal with Atal Behari Vajpayee. The fact is he was invited to visit India as Chief Executive and that rank would not have stood in the way of any major deal between the two countries.

Those who talk of the problem of protocol in India should realise what matters in India is the substance of the talks and not protocol. And the substance of the talks and possible agreement should be such that his successors too could uphold them instead of repudiating them in the manner Gen. Musharraf repudiated the Lahore Accord negotiated when Vajpayee came to Pakistan in a bus. Anyway Vajpayee does not stand on protocol but focuses on the substance of the talks and kernel of a possible agreement.

If until yesterday Gen. Musharraf as Chief Executive seemed one step less he is now one step above Vajpayee as President of Pakistan and he has to be given that kind of protocol. In between India and Pakistan which have fought four wars within 24 years protocol matters less or should matter the least.

The whole world is happy India and Pakistan are to have a summit. They want peace between the new nuclear powers and harmony in the region with 1.5 billion people half of them living below the poverty line. India which until yesterday did not want to meet Musharraf is now rolling the red carpet out merrily and talking of his finer points. They are welcome to flatter him but what matters far more is what they concede when the talks begin or progress.

Meanwhile, while a new rift has been created between Pakistan and US because of the tactlessness of the regime at home or lack of familiarity with diplomatic niceties, India is getting much too close to the US. The Indian Foreign and Defence Minister Jaswant Singh has spoken in Australia of the evolving cooperation between the Indian and US military systems and possible access to Indian military bases to the US forces. That he said was a mark of greater recognition of the regional importance of India by the US. He talked of such cooperation evolving steadily.

These are times when our diplomacy should be at its best and not at its weakest, with the Foreign Minister exposed to so much discomfiture abroad. It is one thing to be ruled by the military as we have been more than half the time and quite different for military men at the top behaving more like military men in political and diplomatic spheres, as they tend to do, and as the latest developments demonstrate.