February 22, 2008

Pakistanis Strike Political Accord

By JANE PERLEZ and CARLOTTA GALL

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The two main opposition parties that won Pakistan’s elections this week announced Thursday that they had set aside their differences and would form a government, further isolating President Pervez Musharraf, America’s favored ally here.

The speedy accord, just three days after the overwhelming defeat of Mr. Musharraf’s party, was another setback for the embattled Pakistani president and his backers in Washington.

Since the rout of Mr. Musharraf’s political supporters, who won just 40 of 272 seats contested Monday, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to express its confidence in the president as a cooperative ally in the campaign against terrorism for the last six years.

President Bush took time out of his Africa trip to call Mr. Musharraf soon after the vote, and Bush administration officials have said they would still like to see him as part of a power-sharing deal.

But at a news conference, the two opposition leaders, Asif Ali Zardari, of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and Nawaz Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, all but snuffed out what hope remained for such a plan. Instead, the men announced that they would join forces and exclude the remnants of Mr. Musharraf’s party in their coalition. Both had stiff words for Mr. Musharraf, reveling in the opportunity to skewer the man who had dispatched them, on separate occasions in the 1990s, into exile.

Asked by a reporter if Mr. Musharraf could lend any help to the new government, Mr. Sharif replied to much laughter, “He is not capable of giving any kind of help anymore.”

Mr. Zardari was more crisp. “We are not looking at the pro-Musharraf forces,” he said. “I do not believe the pro-Musharraf forces exist.”

The assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Richard A. Boucher, said the Bush administration would work with whatever government the Pakistanis formed. “We look forward to working with whoever emerges as prime minister; we look forward to working with President Musharraf in his new role,” he said in Brussels on Thursday.

But an opposition coalition that threatens Mr. Musharraf is likely to leave the Bush administration uneasy. In addition, both opposition leaders are regarded with some skepticism in Washington, and have a long history of tangles with Mr. Musharraf and corruption accusations.

In the past, the Bush administration has voiced concerns about Mr. Sharif, who is perceived as being close to some of Pakistan’s Islamist parties, as a potential ally in fighting the growing insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, a criticism his supporters contend is unfair.

Mr. Sharif, ousted from his second term as prime minister in 1999 in a coup by Mr. Musharraf when he was army chief, is also seen by the administration as being too hostile to Mr. Musharraf.

After his ouster, Mr. Sharif reached a deal with Mr. Musharraf: his sentence in a 2000 conviction on corruption and hijacking charges was commuted, and he was sent into exile in Saudi Arabia, where he remained until last November.

When Mr. Zardari was released from prison in 2004, after spending eight years in jail while accused of corruption, he went into exile in Dubai and New York, returning only after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, on Dec. 27.

As the head of the largest vote-getting party on Monday, Mr. Zardari invited Mr. Sharif to join his party in Parliament. Mr. Sharif accepted, and the two announced their accord later at a news conference at Mr. Zardari’s spacious Islamabad house.

“We’ve agreed on a common agenda, and we will work together to form a government in the center,” Mr. Sharif said.

The differences between the opposition leaders centered on how hard to oppose Mr. Musharraf now and how far to go in undoing many of the unpopular steps he took after he declared emergency rule on Nov. 3.

While Mr. Sharif has called for the president’s impeachment, Mr. Zardari has been less strident in his opposition.

Mr. Sharif has also stressed the need to reinstate the Supreme Court judges who seemed poised to declare Mr. Musharraf ineligible for another presidential term when he dismissed them under his emergency decree. Many of the judges remain under house arrest, and the call resonated with many voters.

Mr. Zardari, who faces corruption charges from the 1990s in the Pakistani courts and might suffer from independent-minded courts, had been less decisive on the issue. But by Thursday night the two men suggested they were in harmony on the judges, and it was Mr. Sharif who had to bend to Mr. Zardari’s point of view.

“In principle, there is no disagreement on the restoration of the judiciary,” Mr. Sharif said. “We will work out the modalities in the Parliament.”

Perhaps facing the reality of a lack of numbers in the new Parliament, Mr. Sharif also appeared to have softened his insistence that Mr. Musharraf be impeached. The coalition between the parties of Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif would fall short of the two-thirds majority needed in the lower house for impeachment.

And even though analysts said they were likely to stitch smaller parties into the government, the coalition would still need control of the Senate. Currently, the party that has supported Mr. Musharraf, Pakistan Muslim League-Q, dominates it.

Even so, the balance of power now rests with Mr. Musharraf’s opponents, who will control Parliament and name a new prime minister. The opposition could use its majority to roll back many of the unpopular steps, like restrictions on the news media, that Mr. Musharraf decreed last year when he was still both president and army chief.

Since then, under great pressure, Mr. Musharraf yielded control over the army, Pakistan’s most powerful institution. Monday’s election and the announcement by the opposition parties completed the return to civilian rule.

As the negotiations proceeded between Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari in the last two days, political circles here were awash with talk that Washington was interfering, trying to micromanage a process in which the Bush administration has much at stake.

The impression that the United States was meddling was fortified Wednesday when Mr. Zardari was summoned to the American Embassy for a meeting with the ambassador, Anne W. Patterson.

Afterward, Mr. Zardari was portrayed as a creature of the Americans who wanted him to work with Mr. Musharraf, a negative perception for a politician in a country where recent polls show the United States has a favorable rating of just 16 percent.

An article in the newspaper The News on Thursday by the journalist Mariana Baabar said: “Eyebrows were raised as to why Zardari, in his present position when his party has received the people’s mandate, felt it necessary to drive all the way and call on the U.S. envoy.”

The writer continued: “Have you ever heard of or seen India’s Sonia Gandhi going to the American Embassy while in the opposition?” The correct protocol, Pakistanis said, was for Ms. Patterson to visit Mr. Zardari.

But Mr. Zardari, who joined his wife, Ms. Bhutto, on a trip to Washington last fall when she was in talks with the Bush administration on returning to Pakistan to join Mr. Musharraf in the government, brushed off the notion that he was under pressure to conform to a pro-Musharraf agenda.

“If I couldn’t come under pressure with eight years of prison life, I don’t think I would come under pressure now,” Mr. Zardari said at the news conference.

Before the joint appearance, the leader of the anti-Musharraf lawyers movement, Aitzaz Ahsan, accused the Bush administration of being reluctant to recognize that the Pakistani voters had rejected Mr. Musharraf.

Mr. Ahsan, who was arrested on Nov. 3 when Mr. Musharraf imposed emergency rule and fired the chief justice of the Supreme Court and many other judges, remains under house arrest in Lahore.

But since Tuesday he has been allowed to hold news conferences in his study and to receive visitors, one of them the United States consul general in Lahore, Bryan Hunt.

Mr. Ahsan said he had blunt words for Mr. Hunt, telling him that the United States was being too supportive of Mr. Musharraf. “The guy is history, please don’t prop him up,” he said he told the diplomat. Mr. Ahsan said the United States should ask Mr. Musharraf to resign.

Mr. Ahsan is a senior member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, although he had a prickly relationship with Ms. Bhutto in recent years. From his talks with his colleagues in the Peoples Party, he said he understood the Americans were pushing for the party to align with the president’s party.

Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/wo...gewanted=print