Obama reaches out to Sharif in hopes to stabilise Pakistan

NEW YORK, May 2: Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is being courted by the Obama administration to bolster the government of President Asif Ali Zardari to confront the stiffening challenge by Taliban insurgents, the New York Times said on the eve of Zardari’s visit to Washington.

The newspaper said as the American confidence in the Pakistani government wanes, the Obama administration is reaching out more directly than before to Sharif.
The report, since President Obama on Wednesday himself declared Zardari regime ‘weak and vulnerable’, reflects the heightened concern in the Obama administration about the survivability of the Zardari government, the newspaper said.
Obama said he was ‘gravely concerned’ about the stability of the Pakistani government; on Friday, a Defense Department official described Mr. Zardari as being ‘very very weak’ the newspaper said.
Gen. David Petraeus the head of the United States Central Command, has said in private meetings in Washington that Pakistan’s government is increasingly vulnerable, according to administration officials.
General Petraeus is among those expected to attend an all-day meeting on Saturday with senior administration officials to discuss the next steps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in advance of high-level sessions next week in Washington, when Zardari and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan will meet with President Obama at the White House.
The Times said Washington has a bad history of trying to engineer domestic Pakistani politics, and no one in the administration is trying to broker an actual power-sharing agreement between Zardari and Sharif, administration officials say.
But the officials were quoted as telling the newspaper that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Richard C. Holbrooke the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, have both urged Zardari and Sharif to look for ways to work together, seeking to capitalize on Sharif’s appeal among the country’s Islamic groups.
Some Pakistani officials told the Times that members of Zardari’s government already were reaching out to Sharif and that officials in Washington were exaggerating their influence over Pakistani politics.
According to one Pakistani official, the government in Islamabad recently asked Sharif to rejoin the governing coalition. The two tried power-sharing last year, and that dissolved in acrimony only a week after Sharif and Zardari had banded together to force the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf
Obama administration officials have been up front in expressing dissatisfaction with the response shown by Zardari’s government to increasing attacks by Taliban fighters and insurgents with Al Qaeda in the country’s tribal areas, and along its western border with Afghanistan.
One official told the Times the administration wanted to broker an agreement not so much to buoy Zardari personally, but to accomplish what the administration believes Pakistan must do.
‘The idea here is to tie Sharif’s popularity to things we think need to be done, like dealing with the militancy,’ said the official, who insisted on anonymity to speak more candidly about American differences with Pakistan’s government.
Both Holbrooke and Clinton have spoken with Sharif by telephone in the past month, and have urged Zardari’s increasingly unpopular government to work closely with Sharif, administration officials said.
‘We told them they’re facing a national challenge, and for that, you need bipartisanship,’ a senior administration official said. ‘The president’s popularity is in the low double digits. Nawaz Sharif is at 83 per cent. They need to band together against the militants.’
Sir Mark Lyall Grant, director of political affairs at the British Foreign Office, was in Washington on Monday for talks with Holbrooke and Clinton on Pakistan, according to American and European officials.
The three discussed Sharif, but no conclusions were reached, a European official said. ‘There’s certainly no agreement that Nawaz should become Zardari’s prime minister,’ the official said, speaking on grounds of anonymity.
He said the enmity between the two would make such a situation impossible. But he added: ‘We need people who have influence over the militancy in Pakistan to calm it down. Who’s got influence? The army, yes. And Nawaz, yes.’