U.S. Uneasy with Pakistan's New Direction

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

Two senior U.S. envoys are touring the volatile tribal region of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. They are Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher. They met today with tribal leaders and commanders of paramilitary forces. And they're in Pakistan to confer with the country's new coalition government.

As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, it has signaled that there could be changes to its counterterrorism strategy.

JACKIE NORTHAM: Last month's parliamentary election not only heralded a new political era in Pakistan, it also marked the critical change in relations between Islamabad and Washington. After the party of President Pervez Musharraf, a long-time U.S. ally, was trounced in the polls.

Ambassadors Negroponte and Boucher held a flurry of meetings with Pakistan's new civilian leaders, among them Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister and head of the second largest political party. At a news conference, Sharif denounced Musharraf's U.S.-backed counterterrorism policies saying they had turned Pakistan into a killing field.

Mr. NAWAZ SHARIF (President, Pakistan Muslim League; Former Prime Minister): (Through Translator) Today, here, no city or town is safe. People are being mercilessly killed and it should stop.

NORTHAM: Analysts say Negroponte and Boucher's trip is in part to extract a commitment from Pakistan's fledgling government that it will continue to work with the U.S. to battle extremists grouped along the border with Afghanistan. But already, Pakistan's new civilian rulers indicate they are rethinking the current policy, and that they would be willing to negotiate with militants.

Hassan Abbas is a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He says despite Musharraf's policies, there has been dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks in Pakistan in the past year and a half.

Professor HASSAN ABBAS (Research Fellow, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government): Whatever Musharraf was doing, his policy was not delivering. So maybe there's need for reevaluation, rethinking, and of course, being a new political group, they will try to gain some strength across Pakistan by telling people that this new government will have a different strategy, even if it is, like, all buying new bottles.

NORTHAM: Abbas says a new policy would likely involve some economic development in the tribal areas. That it would be more of a political approach using force only as a last resort. And Abbas says it's unlikely that government would sit down and negotiate with militant leaders.

Prof. ABBAS: With some of them there can be some talks who are not hardcore al-Qaida, who are not hardcore Taliban, those which are in the outer circle, which are conservative, but not necessarily militants or terrorists.

NORTHAM: This proposed approach by Pakistan's new government to fighting terrorism has jangled nerves in Washington where administration officials clearly remember how two earlier efforts at opening negotiations and creating so-called peace deals with Pakistani militants allowed al-Qaida and the Taliban to flourish in the tribal areas.

Still, the U.S. has to be careful not to be seen as dictating policy to Pakistan's fledgling government at this early stage, says Karl Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary for South Asian Affairs who now teaches at George Washington University.

Professor KARL INDERFURTH (International Politics, George Washington University; Former Assistant Secretary, South and Central Asian Affairs): The Pakistanis do not like the fact that for the last eight and a half years, the U.S. has been basically supporting a Musharraf policy not a Pakistan policy, and therefore the U.S. has engendered a fair amount of opposition.

NORTHAM: Pakistan is inextricably linked to the U.S. and NATO operations in neighboring Afghanistan because it's the gateway through which those operations are supplied.

Michael Scheuer, a former al-Qaida specialist at the CIA, says if Pakistan doesn't cooperate, the U.S. is faced with dire alternatives.

Mr. MICHAEL SCHEUER (Former CIA al-Qaida Specialist): Either we will have to massively reinforce the garrison we have in Afghanistan and begin to go into the Pakistani border areas or we'll have to withdraw.

NORTHAM: But Inderfurth says Pakistan's new government ultimately knows it needs to work with the U.S. against radical elements.

Prof. INDERFURTH: It's not just the war on terrorism at large, but many of these elements are seeking to undermine the Pakistani state, and I think the new political leadership there recognizes that.

NORTHAM: And just in case, the U.S. is also cultivating its relationship with Pakistan's new military leaders.

Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.

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