November 5, 2007
U.S. Is Likely to Continue Aid to Pakistan
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID ROHDE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 — The Bush administration signaled Sunday that it would probably keep billions of dollars flowing to Pakistan’s military, despite the detention of human rights advocates and leaders of the political opposition by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the country’s president.

In carefully calibrated public statements and blunter private acknowledgments about the limits of American leverage over General Musharraf, the man President Bush has called one of his most critical allies, the officials argued that it would be counterproductive to let Pakistan’s political turmoil interfere with their best hope of ousting Al Qaeda’s central leadership and the Taliban from the country’s mountainous tribal areas.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that while the United States would “have to review the situation with aid,” she said three times that President Bush’s first concern was “to protect America and protect American citizens by continuing to fight against terrorists.”

“That means we have to be very cognizant of the counterterrorism operations that we are involved in,” she said. “We have to be very cognizant of the fact that some of the assistance that has been going to Pakistan is directly related to the counterterrorism mission.”

In Islamabad, aides to General Musharraf — who had dismissed pleas on Friday from Ms. Rice and Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior military commander in the Middle East, to avoid the state-of-emergency declaration — said they had anticipated that there would be few real consequences.

They called the American reaction “muted,” saying General Musharraf had not received phone calls of protest from Mr. Bush or other senior American officials. In unusually candid terms, they said American officials supported stability over democracy.

“They would rather have a stable Pakistan — albeit with some restrictive norms — than have more democracy prone to fall in the hands of extremists,” said Tariq Azim Khan, the minister of state for information. “Given the choice, I know what our friends would choose.”

It was a sign of their confidence that Pakistani officials announced that parliamentary elections set for January might be delayed for as long as a year. Just before she learned of that announcement, Ms. Rice said, “We have a very clear view that the elections need to take place on time, which would mean the beginning of the year.”

Visiting Beijing today, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States was reviewing its programs for military assistance to Pakistan, although he noted that the Bush administration also would take into serious consideration the need to continue counter-terrorism efforts in the region.

“Pakistan is a country of great strategic importance to the United States and a key partner in the war on terror,” Mr. Gates said during a news conference at the Chinese Ministry of Defense. “However, the actions of the past 72 hours have been disturbing. We urge President Musharraf to return his country to law-based, constitutional and democratic rule as soon as possible.”

Mr. Gates said the United States had begun “reviewing all of our assistance programs” to Pakistan. But, he noted, “We are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counter-terrorism efforts.”

In a further sign of American concern over the situation in Pakistan, the United States postponed annual security consultations between the two nations that were to have been held for two days this week in Islamabad. The chief of the American delegation, Eric Edelman, the under secretary of defense for policy, already was on his way to the meeting when the Bush administration decided it would not allow its representatives to attend the bilateral session.

“We have taken the initiative to postpone it,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, who accompanied Mr. Gates to Beijing. Mr. Morrell said the American decision illustrated “a degree of disappointment” with Mr. Musharraf’s declaration of a state of emergency on Saturday. The bilateral security talks could be rescheduled, Mr. Morrell said, “as soon as conditions are more conducive.”

In Washington, officials acknowledged that they were trying to balance the American insistence that Pakistan remain on the path to democracy and General Musharraf’s unwillingness to risk chaos that would allow Al Qaeda and the Taliban to operate more freely.

“The equities in Pakistan are huge,” said a senior official deeply involved in trying to persuade General Musharraf to fulfill his promise to hold elections and run the country as a civilian leader. “We’ve got U.S. and NATO troops dying in Afghanistan, and a war on terrorism” that cannot be halted while General Musharraf tries to shore up his powers, he said.

It was unclear to what extent General Musharraf perceived an urgent threat to the country in deciding to declare an emergency that suspended civil liberties.

But several administration officials said they were struck by the heavy-handed nature of the crackdown announced Saturday. Until a few days ago, they said, General Musharraf had been offering private assurances that any emergency declaration would be short-lived. “They have made this crisis more acute by the way they’ve done this,” the official concluded.

President Bush has made spreading democracy a major foreign policy theme and his administration has quietly pushed General Musharraf for months to be more open to sharing power, going so far as to help broker talks between him and Benazir Bhutto, the leader of Pakistan’s largest opposition party.

But Mr. Bush has said nothing in public about General Musharraf’s latest action. His silence contrasts sharply to his reaction to the crackdown on dissidents in Myanmar last month. In that case, Mr. Bush announced specific steps against Myanmar rulers. But Pakistan, officials argued, is a different case: it is a nuclear-armed nation that Mr. Bush had designated a “major non-NATO ally,” even though its enthusiasm for counterterrorism has been episodic.

In Islamabad, Western officials said Mr. Bush’s limited choices could worsen if protests erupted, and they complained that in the past few months General Musharraf had focused more on weakening his rivals than fighting Islamic extremists.

For more than a year before Saturday’s declaration, American officials have seethed over Pakistan’s poor performance against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. General Musharraf’s effort to strike a deal with Islamic militant groups in the tribal areas failed. When he ordered troops back into the tribal areas in recent months, many were killed or kidnapped.

In interviews before and after the emergency declaration, Western diplomats and former Pakistani military officials said General Musharraf had done a poor job countering growing militancy, particularly this year. The military-led government has moved too slowly, prepared poorly for operations and often appeased militant groups.

“Initially, this was not complicated,” said Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier who was the senior Pakistani government official in charge of security in the tribal areas until last year. “Now, this is a very complicated situation.”

Through it all, the United States has continued pumping money to the country. While the total dollar amount of American aid to Pakistan is unclear, a study published in August by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated it to be “at least $10 billion in Pakistan since 9/11, excluding covert funds.” Sixty percent of that has gone to “Coalition Support Funds,” essentially direct payments to the Pakistani military, and 15 percent to purchase major weapons systems. Another 15 percent has been for general budget support for the Pakistani government; only 10 percent for development or humanitarian assistance.

General Musharraf’s supporters argued Sunday that his government — now unencumbered by legal constraints and political concerns by the emergency decree — will be in a better position to eradicate extremists and that if the United States wants that security, it must back him.

“If your agenda is to save attacks in the U.S. and eliminate Al Qaeda, only the Pakistani Army can do that,” said the close aide to General Musharraf. “For that, you will have to forget about elections in Pakistan for maybe two to three years.”

Pakistani opposition groups argue that General Musharraf has failed and that his emergency declaration will increase instability and militancy in the country. They say nationwide elections would produce a moderate government with popular support to crack down on militancy.

There is little question that General Musharraf has failed to develop broad domestic support for battling terrorists. His political party is divided, has not carried out promised reforms and would likely lose an election.

A poll in September by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based nonprofit group, showed that Osama bin Laden was more popular in Pakistan than General Musharraf, with 46 percent of respondents giving him a “favorable” rating against 38 percent for the president. Ms. Bhutto got a “favorable” rating from 63 percent. The nationwide poll surveyed 1,044 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, David Rohde from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Thom Shanker from Beijing.