COVER STORY

Changing tack in Washington

The United States is evidently set to continue the game and engage the Generals.

SRIDHAR KRISHNASWAMI
in Washington

A POLITICIAN as astute as Nawaz Sharif should have known that when it comes to dumping those who have outlived their utility and shedding crocodile tears for them, there is none to beat administrations in Washington. And that the Clinton administration would be no different in this matter. When push came to shove and the men in uniform forcibly entered the political process in Pakistan, Washington was looking for rationales to continue the game and engage the Generals.

It took the Clinton administration a few days to determine, officially and legally, that a coup in Pakistan had indeed taken place.

For Sharif, the only solace was that senior officials in the Clinton administration were ready to hand out commendation certificates; but this was in some ways intended to "protect" the political establishment in Washington - in the unlikely event of the deposed Prime Minister returning to power.

It should come as no surprise that Washington will continue its dialogue with Islamabad. In fact, it would have been naive to assume that the Clinton administration would close all the avenues just because Pervez Musharraf took over the reins of power. It was keen to maintain the dialogue because the bottom line was that there are tangible interests for the U.S. in Pakistan - strategic, political and economic.

But domestic politics in the U.S. being what it is - and what it will always be - the appropriate noises had to be made. And the officialdom at the White House and in the State Department did an excellent job of it; its job, of course, was made a lot easy by the popular reaction within Pakistan to the turn of events.

The U.S. administration subsequently found it easy to list all the shortcomings of the deposed Sharif Government. However, few in Washington are making the point that the Kargil factor - in particular, Sharif's orders (under U.S. pressure) to his troops to pull back from the Indian side of the Line of Control in July - was a principal reason why Sharif lost the power game.

The Clinton administration then began parroting the line that Gen. Musharraf must restore civilian democracy at the earliest, that the U.S. could not do business with Pakistan until then, but that, on the other hand, the U.S. could not "walk away" from Pakistan. This line has been articulated fairly routinely at the State Department, the White House and at congressional hearings.

It is unlikely that the broad contours of this policy line will change in the short term; it will probably be amended suitably over a period of time if the General gets "more comfortable" in his new outfit.

AP
U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan
William Milan (right) calls on Musharraf.

The coup in Pakistan could not have come at a worse time for Washington: just after Congress had passed legislation authorising comprehensive and permanent waivers of the sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan following the nuclear tests of May 1998. And upon the President signing the Defence Authorisation Bill, the administration would have started reviewing and lifting most, if not all, of the sanctions.

What will happen now is that while sanctions against India will merit immediate attention, President Bill Clinton cannot do anything for Pakistan until an elected government has been restored. And analysts in Washington believe that that could be a long way off. There is talk that about two years will be needed for the situation to stablise and for elections to be held in that country.

One of the key backers of the move to lift the sanctions was Republican Senator Sam Brownback from Kansas; he pointed out that his amendment at this point of time only amounted to a "structural change in the law" that would help the President after a democratically elected government is in place in Pakistan. He also lashed out at the administration for "dumping" Sharif; such an action only sent a "terrible message" to the world, he said.

Brownback was one of the first to argue that no one was giving Pakistan a "pass" on the military coup; he pointed out that the administration had invoked Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act, which mandated blanket sanctions on any country where the duly elected leader was deposed in a coup. There may not be much sympathy for Sharif's way of doing business in his country, but Section 508 does not give the administration much leeway in the matter.

There was another unintended fallout of the coup: the U.S. administration was forced to make its intentions known on the scope of the waivers on the Glenn and Pressler amendments. In response to some close questioning by Congressman Gary Ackerman, the Co-Chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, in the House Asia-Pacific Sub-Committee Hearing, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Karl Inderfurth said that the administration had neither the plan nor the intention to resume supplying arms to Pakistan.

The Clinton administration has for long been pressing Congress for a "level playing field" in respect of legislation that is perceived as restrictive; it argued that such legislation was preventing the U.S. from fully pursuing its foreign policy goals. When Congress was debating the future of the sanctions on India and Pakistan, the Senate adopted through the Brownback Amendment a permanent waiver but took the Pressler law from the books. The House version spoke of waivers for one year but did not tamper with the Pressler law. The Conferees of the House and Senate went in for comprehensive and permanent waivers; as a result, not only the Glenn Amendment but also the Pressler Amendment were taken off the list.

For all its expressions of "sympathy" and invocation of national security interests, the Clinton administration will have a difficult time explaining to Congress just why certain relaxations would have to be made. For instance, it is fairly common knowledge that Pakistan's economy is in deep trouble. In fact, the conviction in the U.S. is that Pakistan has for quite some time been tottering on the brink. A formal meltdown of the Pakistani economy will have an impact in the immediate neighbourhood and on Washington's policies in the region.

This is the reason why the Clinton administration will not anymore lean heavily on Pakistan. Washington has said, for instance, that Islamabad has problems with the International Monetary Fund and that the disbursement of the third tranche of IMF loans, $280 million out of the total package of $1.6 billion, was in jeopardy much before the Army emerged from the barracks.

The Clinton administration will also look to India to a certain extent to ease things in Pakistan. And it will expect India to respond meaningfully to the olive branch extended by Gen. Musharraf. Senior officials are also aware of the problems from an Indian point of view: aside from a perception of being let down or "cheated" after the Lahore summit, New Delhi has made it plain that it cannot negotiate so long as Islamabad was fully involved in a state-run terror campaign across the border.

But the hope in official and private quarters in Washington is that the Lahore process will be restarted and that India and Pakistan will settle down to talk about contentious issues in a serious manner. If Gen. Musharraf can be taken at face value - given that he is believed to have initiated and presided over the Kargil debacle - something positive could still come of the ominous developments.