The news..Giving details of their closed-door meeting, the newspaper disclosed the two also discussed the continuing, but so far largely unsuccessful, efforts to encourage defections and dissension among tribal leaders and commanders in Taliban-controlled southern Afghanistan. Rumsfeld also asked for as much intelligence assistance as Pakistan could provide, says the report.General Pervez Musharraf has offered the United States the use of three additional airbases in western Pakistan to support the bombing campaign, says The Washington Post.
Small wonder that Musharraf got full marks for his avowed support. The New York Times was quick to write an ode to "Musharraf -- the Indispensable Ally." For a man ruling a nation of 140 million Muslims, who is torn between a reluctant military alliance with the United States and Islamic militants who almost daily urge his overthrow for siding with "infidels," Musharraf is radiating an impressive calm, says the report.
The Times said that after a taut, nervous start in mid-September, when he took the hazardous gamble of switching Pakistan's allegiance from the Taliban to the United States, General Musharraf has seemed to grow in confidence. The biggest indicator is that he plans to leave Pakistan this week for the first time since the start of the war to address the United Nations General Assembly.
However, the NY Times raised the spectre of his overthrow during his absence from Pakistan. The newspaper expressed concern that this could leave Pakistan's fate, and that of America's war, in the hands of generals less resolute in their support of the United States. It went on to draw the nightmarish scenario about Pakistan's nuclear bombs, falling into the hands of Taliban, a spectre that Pakistanis find ridiculous but causes sleepless nights to strategists in Washington.
The newspaper announces that General Musharraf now has America's clear support, even though the United States condemned him for his military coup. "Men either grow or diminish in crisis, and General Musharraf is one who has grown," a US official has been quoted as saying.
"He's been straight, he's delivered what he's promised and he hasn't faltered. The only question now is whether he can carry all the other generals with him. Does he really have their loyalties? Does he really know what they are doing, especially the ones who have links with the Taliban? These are things we don't know yet, and we don't know if he really knows them either."
It says the Americans are confident that the general has matters firmly in hand, or as firmly as any Pakistani ruler could, and his own demeanour seems to support that view. Far from the edgy, almost apologetic figure he cut in the televised announcement of his "full support" for the United States, he has seemed almost bouncy, as if the crisis was something he had been waiting for all his life, writes The Times. |
