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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (9695)	11/21/1999 9:04:00 AM
From: JPR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Mohan: Citibank VP Shaukat AZIZ as Finance Minister of Pakistan nytimes.com Musharaff ropes in / recruits / conscripts Citibank VP as Finance Minister ===JPR Shaukat Aziz, a Pakistani living in New York, was a highly paid vice president at Citibank. Soon after the coup, he was urged to visit Islamabad by General Musharraf, a man he had never met. The military wanted advice about an economy that is $32 billion in debt and on the brink of bankruptcy. The general offered the banker the post of finance minister. "I was impressed by the chief executive and his team, their sense of purpose and eagerness to set things right," said Aziz, a perfectly coifed executive with just the right amount of gray around his temples and a neatly folded handkerchief in the breast pocket of his blue blazer. "Pakistan has this small window of opportunity here, this chance to fix things with integrity and transparency," he said. "The army wants to do away with the culture of corruption that exists in Pakistan. And I'm totally convinced they mean business, that they really care about improving the lot of the people." Omar Asghar Khan, an environmentalist who has been working in opposition to the illegal harvesting of timber, was offered a cabinet post to oversee rural development and labor issues. "These people are talking about the devolution of powers, trying to get average citizens into government," said Khan, the Cambridge-educated son of an air marshal. "They don't have a time frame for a return to democracy, but I don't blame them for that. The sheer survival of the state is at stake. Things shouldn't be rushed." Abdul Sattar, an amiable, if pedantic, retired diplomat, was at a conference in Washington when the coup occurred on Oct. 12. He too had never met General Musharraf, but the two hit it off after Sattar was asked in for consultation. Both men share a burning distrust of India, Pakistan's neighbor and fellow nuclear power. Indeed, Sattar, who has twice been ambassador to New Delhi, said the 13 years he spent on Indian-Pakistan relations was a "desert that produced nothing positive." He accepted the job of foreign minister. "Democracy here was just musical chairs, and what we need are fundamental reforms," Sattar said.