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Sunday, Sep 24, 2006
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Musharraf accused of weakness

Nirupama Subramanian

President caved in to U.S. pressure: Opposition

ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf's sudden revelation that the U.S. had threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" has bewildered analysts as to its purpose and timing.

But if Gen. Musharraf said it to win friends back home, that has not happened, though it has reconfirmed the country's worst nightmares about America.

Opposition politicians have condemned Gen. Musharraf for caving in to American pressure, with one even asking how the leader of a nuclear-armed country could have allowed himself to be pushed around by such threats.

Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) secretary-general Iqbal Zafar Jhagra said the President had not acted like the leader of a nuclear-armed country.

He said the U.S. was not in a position to threaten nuclear powers. He said the former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, had shown more courage by carrying out the nuclear tests in May 1998 against the wishes of the U.S.

The Pakistan People's Party said the U.S. would not have dared make such a threat had a democratic government been in power. Raza Rabbani, leader of the Opposition in the Senate, said Gen. Musharraf's revelation was contrary to his denials in 2001 that he had joined the "war on terror" under pressure from the U.S.

Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal president Qazi Hussain said Pakistan should have resisted the U.S. just as Iran has done. Gen. Musharraf should have taken the nation into confidence at that time, and talked to China or some other friendly country to ward off the U.S., he said.

The Nation newspaper said the primary reason Iran and Venezuela had been able to vociferously denounce American "expansionism" was because they had Governments with "genuine mass support."

"If we had a Government answerable to the people, we might have been able to avoid at least the more unpleasant aspects of American bidding," the newspaper said in an editorial.

The Dawn, noting the denial by Richard Armitage, deputy Secretary of State who is supposed to have spoken the threat, said it was equally possible that he said those words.

"After all, it is also in this day and age that Mr. Henry Kissinger had told Mr. Z.A. Bhutto that America would make a `horrible example' of him if he did not relent on his nuclear programme and his pro-Third World politics," the newspaper recalled.

The bomb-shell by Gen. Musharraf, so close to the release of his memoirs "In the Line of Fire," and his suggestion at the joint press conference with U.S. President George Bush that the rest of the story was in the book, has definitely done its bit to boost interest in it.

Mohammed Eusoph, owner of the capital's popular bookstore Mr. Books, said he was snowed under with enquiries about the book's release. "My phone has not stopped ringing since morning. The book has already got a massive response," Mr. Eusoph said.

For Pakistan, the book carries the special price of Rs. 1250, approximately $20.

Comparing it with the mania that accompanies a Harry Potter book release, he said: "This is Harry Musharraf."

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