Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani left for Washington on a three-day visit yesterday to defend his government’s reluctance to crack down on Islamic militants blamed by US officials for soaring violence in neighboring Afghanistan.
The trip comes amid intensifying US pressure for Pakistan, a vital ally in its war on terror, to move against strongholds that Taliban and al-Qaeda militants have established in its border regions.
It will be the first such visit by Gilani since he came to power following Feb. 18 elections.
Gilani will meet US President George W. Bush at the White House tomorrow and they will have a “wide-ranging exchange of views on bilateral matters and regional and international issues of common interest,” a Foreign Ministry statement said yesterday.
Gilani’s three-month-old government is persevering with efforts to negotiate peace deals along the wild frontier and stabilize a country roiled by Islamist suicide attacks.
Force will be used only as a last resort, Gilani reiterated this past week.
“Pakistan’s national security and internal stability is paramount,” Information Minister Sherry Rehman said. “Pakistan is making its own policy for its own problems.”
Gilani’s first plunge into the center of US power begins at the deep end with separate meetings with Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, all tomorrow.
His hectic, three-day schedule also includes appointments with lawmakers, academics and journalists. Officials say he may meet with the contenders in November’s presidential election, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.
Gilani, whose government is wrestling with daunting economic problems exacerbated by skyrocketing oil prices, will also meet with members of Bush’s economic team and address business leaders.
But the sharpest questions are likely to address the growing disconnect between Islamabad and Washington over how to counter violent Islamic extremists. Al-Qaeda leaders are believed to find sanctuary in Pakistan, while US troops in eastern Afghanistan are facing a spike in cross-border attacks by Taliban insurgents.
Since taking over from an administration dominated by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the new government has sought peace pacts with the tribes of Taliban militants.
US officials have voiced support for efforts to woo moderate tribal elders and isolate hardliners.
Washington also has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars for a drive to bring economic development to the border region that Pakistan hopes will dry up support for extremism. It has funneled more than US$10 billion mostly in military aid to Pakistan in the past six years.
But US civilian and military leaders — and the presidential hopefuls — frown on the government’s decision to strike ceasefires with militants while the talks are ongoing. They also fear that any agreements — especially clauses on expelling foreign militants and preventing cross-border attacks — will not be enforced.
“We understand that it’s difficult, we understand that the northwest frontier area is difficult, but militants cannot be allowed to organize there and to plan there and to engage across the border,” Rice told reporters in Australia on Friday. “So yes, more needs to be done.”
Musharraf, the former army strongman who sided with the US after the Sept. 11 attacks, launched repeated military operations against militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt.
However, the new coalition government, comprising the parties of slain former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and another ex-prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, argues that Musharraf’s reliance on the erratic and heavy-handed use of force ended up strengthening militants and turning their wrath against the Pakistani state.
Gilani on Wednesday chaired a meeting of coalition leaders that reiterated its intent to use political dialogue to rein in the militants — despite a spate of arson attacks on girls schools in the northwest, and an al-Qaeda suicide attack last month on the Danish embassy.
Gilani has a tough task convincing Washington that Islamabad is doing all it can to contain the threat in support of a US anti-terror policy deeply unpopular at home.
Stephen Cohen, a Pakistan expert at the Brookings Institute in Washington, said US opinion-makers and “some in the government” were “very impatient” with the new government’s failure to develop a clear strategy toward extremists.
However, neither Democrats nor Republicans had identified any alternative to Washington’s alliance with Islamabad, Cohen said.
“It’s an uneasy marriage, but it’s a marriage that will kind of hang together,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS