Musharraf ignores U.S. pressure to lift emergency in Pakistan

By David Rohde
Saturday, November 17, 2007

ISLAMABAD: Defying pressure from a senior U.S. envoy, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan declined to say Saturday when he would lift a two-week-old state of emergency, Pakistani and Western officials said.

In a two-hour meeting with the envoy, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, the highest ranking U.S. diplomat after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Musharraf said he would end the state of emergency when security improved.

"He said that they were looking into the administration and there were quite a few factors," a close aide to Musharraf said of the state of emergency. "The president said, 'I have noted your concerns and I think I will address all of these.' "

A Western diplomat who declined to comment on the meeting said it would take time to determine whether the U.S. message had had an impact on Musharraf, who also heads the Pakistani military.

"In diplomacy, things don't happen instantaneously," said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He came with a very strong message and he delivered a very strong message," the diplomat said of Negroponte.

Musharraf's defiance continues to be a major embarrassment for the United States, which has provided more than $10 billion in aid to Musharraf's government since 2001 and declared him a valued ally. Ten days ago, President George W. Bush telephoned Musharraf and asked him to end the state of emergency, with no result.

On Nov. 3, Musharraf declared the state of emergency -- de facto martial law -- blacking out independent news stations and arresting an estimated 2,500 opposition politicians, lawyers and human rights activists. The move — which Musharraf has said is an effort to curb terrorism — is widely seen by Pakistanis as an effort by the increasingly unpopular president to cling to power.

U.S. officials said Negroponte was carrying a stiff warning to Musharraf to end the emergency, release all prisoners, resign from his post as army chief and hold free and fair elections in January. Negroponte, a longtime diplomat, is known as a blunt negotiator.

A second Western diplomat said Musharraf would not want to be seen as bowing to U.S. pressure and was unlikely to lift the emergency in the next several days. But he predicted that Musharraf would eventually face criticism from fellow military officers.

"Nothing he's doing is relieving the pressure on him," said the diplomat. "I think sooner or later his military colleagues are going to have to start whispering to him that concession and change is necessary."

In a sign of Musharraf's growing isolation, a key political supporter, Mushahid Hussain, called Saturday for an end to the emergency. Hussain, chairman of the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, Musharraf's political party, said ending the state of emergency would cause "less tension, less political conflict and less polarization."

"The national interest would be better served," Hussain said in an interview with Dawn News, a Pakistani television channel. "The emergency has been having a very negative impact, both at home and abroad."

A poll conducted in early September by the International Republican Institute, a private group based in Washington, found that 79 percent of Pakistanis disapproved of Musharraf's job performance even then and that 70 percent supported his immediate resignation. His popularity is believed to have decreased further since he declared the emergency Nov. 3.

Before meeting with Musharraf, Negroponte met with General Ashfaq Kayani, deputy commander of the Pakistani Army. Kayani, a pro-Western moderate, is Musharraf's designated successor and widely believed to want to remove the army from politics and focus on securing the country.

Western diplomats believe that the Pakistani Army still supports Musharraf but that there is unease with his leadership. With the army facing a growing insurgency from Islamist militants in the northwest, generals are eager to have an army chief who is focused solely on military matters and not distracted by politics, they said.

Twice in Pakistan's history, senior generals have asked military rulers to resign when their conduct was deemed to be damaging to the army as an institution.

"The consensus is the generals are very uneasy," said the second Western diplomat. "The longer it goes on the more damage is done, and that is something that will be uppermost in the minds of the generals."

U.S. and Pakistani officials declined to comment on the meeting between Negroponte and Kayani. Pakistani officials said Kayani also attended a subsequent meeting between Negroponte and Musharraf.

Musharraf's crackdown on the Pakistani media continues, according to local journalists. On Friday night, pressure from Musharraf caused officials in Dubai to block all broadcasts from two independent television networks, ARY and Geo. While blocked from Pakistan's cable TV system, the two stations' broadcasts from their studios in Dubai could be seen online and via satellite.

Government officials have ordered stations to cancel talk shows they dislike, according to local journalists. They said owners, who have lost millions in ad revenue since being shut down, are acquiescing.

"The news coverage that we're doing is evoking a really harsh reaction from the government," said Talat Hussain, an anchor with Aaj television who resigned Saturday after management canceled his talk show. "And the owners are not really standing up to government pressure."

In the days before Negroponte's arrival, the government allowed several independent news stations to resume telecasting on cable television. But the stations operate under a strict new press law that carries a sentence of up to three years in jail for journalists who "ridicule" the president.

Speculation also swirled about which local politicians the United States was backing. After arriving in Islamabad on Friday, Negroponte telephoned the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto after she was released from three days of house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore. The police had blocked Bhutto and her supporters from carrying out a protest march from Lahore to Islamabad.

Negroponte also met Tariq Aziz, secretary of the National Security Council and a close aide of Musharraf. Aziz served as a back-channel negotiator in a U.S. effort to broker a deal between Musharraf and Bhutto that would create an alliance of pro-Western moderates to try to counter rising militancy. U.S. officials hoped that Bhutto's presumed popularity in Pakistan would bolster Musharraf's low standing.

European diplomats and Pakistani analysts have long questioned the viability of a U.S.-engineered Bhutto-Musharraf alliance. Any government they form would be viewed as a puppet of the United States, they said, and both leaders appear to be unpopular.

In the September opinion survey, only 28 percent of Pakistanis polled named Bhutto as the best person to handle the problems facing Pakistan. Seventeen percent named Musharraf. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia and refuses to negotiate with Musharraf, received the highest marks, with 36 percent support.