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Musharraf move is nightmare for Bush Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Helene Cooper
FOR more than five months, the US has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would keep General Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of George Bush's promotion of democracy in the Muslim world. On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Musharraf's move to seize emergency powers and abandon the constitution left the Bush Administration close to its worst nightmare: a US-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public. The US has given Pakistan more than $US10 billion ($11 billion) in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001. Admiral William Fallon, the senior US military commander in the Middle East, told Musharraf and his top generals in Islamabad on Friday that he would put that aid - and thereby Pakistan's ability to pursue terrorists - at risk if he seized emergency powers.
But after Saturday's declaration there was no immediate action by the Administration. Instead, the White House is hoping that the state of emergency will be short-lived and that Musharraf will fulfil his promise to abandon his post as army chief-of-staff and hold elections by January 15. The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, travelling in the Middle East, called Musharraf's move "highly regrettable". Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, called Musharraf's action "a big embarrassment" for the Administration, but said there was not much the US could do. "There's going to be a lot of visible wringing of hands, and urging Musharraf to declare his intentions," she said. "But I don't really see any alternative to continuing to work with him. They can't just decide they're going to blow off the whole country of Pakistan, because it sits right next to Afghanistan, where there are some 26,000 US and NATO troops."
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