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Attack wins supporters in Pakistan

The Pakistani government appears to have abandoned any immediate hope of uniting rival Afghan groups in a new government, Western diplomats said Thursday. Instead, they said, it has shifted toward increased support for American bombing as the best way to topple the Taliban.

The diplomats said that Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, had all but concluded that a political settlement joining so-called moderate Taliban groups with fractious Afghan rivals was unrealistic until the Taliban are removed and a new sense of urgency is introduced into political negotiations.

At the same time, the UN envoy charged with building a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan ended a four-day visit to Islamabad today, saying that talks with Afghan opposition groups had persuaded him that only "slow progress" toward a power-sharing post-Taliban government would be possible.

"I can't give you a time frame as to when that will be," said the envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, who spoke after meeting with representatives of exiled Afghan political groups and the Northern Alliance military coalition, which is fighting the Taliban.

"We will go as fast as possible," he said, "but we won't hurry up just for the sake of pretending that we are making progress."

The diplomats' account of General Musharraf's new position tallied with reports by Pakistani officials, who have said that Pakistan's hopes of avoiding a protracted bombing campaign were dealt a serious blow by the Taliban's execution last week of Abdul Haq, a veteran Afghan military commander.

General Musharraf initially had hoped that the bombing campaign, which began Oct. 7, would be of limited duration.

In granting permission for American planes and missiles to cross Pakistan's airspace, the general was risking support of the public as well as some elements of the military in this Muslim nation. Indeed, there have been large anti-bombing demonstrations around the country in the last few weeks.

But the political reality in Afghanistan seems to have intruded.

The change in General Musharraf's outlook coincides with an intensified bombing campaign this week that includes carpet bombing of Taliban lines by B-52's. Apparently, the diplomats say, the general now hopes that intensified bombing will have the effect he desires: shortening the length of the campaign.

The diplomats said the plan to intensify bombing had been relayed to General Musharraf when he met in Islamabad on Monday with General Tommy R. Franks, commander of the US Central Command, in charge of the air campaign in Afghanistan, and that General Musharraf had not demurred.

In an interview the next day, General Musharraf hinted that he had come around to the view that heavier bombing, even if politically difficult to sustain in the short run, was the most likely way of weakening the Taliban to the point where widespread defections would occur.

"One has to achieve the objective of a military operation," he said, adding: "Afghanistan has suffered, the people are suffering so much that I am reasonably sure that there are many people who question the wisdom of suffering for somebody who is there and not an Afghan, like Osama bin Laden and his people."
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