11-04-2007, 01:27 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Musharraf defies Bush, snubs Rice</b>
<b>That deal now appears to have come unstuck</b>.
Washington though clearly had the inside scoop on Musharraf's impending moves.
Besides sending Fallon and Jordan's King Abdulla to persuade Musharraf not to go down the Emergency route, the U.S also baled out its current prima donna Benazir Bhutto, who fled to Dubai hours before the military action, ostensibly to meet her family.
But the scuttlebutt in Islamabad and Washington is that Benazir -- and the U.S -- knew the crackdown was coming, and she was advised to leave. How Washington will handle this public defiance by Musharraf of the line it laid down -- besides defying popular opinion in Pakistan -- will unravel over the next week.
Musharraf's journey from Washington's poster boy to possibly its problem child has been gradual but understated. Publicly, the Bush administration still swears by him; privately, it began swearing at him some months back when reports first surfaced that he was holding back on Washington in its war on terror.
But instead of dumping him overnight as it often does with odious dictators, Washington decided that the delicate war on terror business demanded a gradual transition in Pakistan, a country seen as the ground zero of world terrorism.
That was when the Bush administration decided to interject Benazir Bhutto, the discredited former prime minister who was not even getting a low level state department appointment till last year.
But with Musharraf in no mood to relent, Washington is now faced with a sticky new situation in a country now commonly described as the most dangerous place in the world. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>That deal now appears to have come unstuck</b>.
Washington though clearly had the inside scoop on Musharraf's impending moves.
Besides sending Fallon and Jordan's King Abdulla to persuade Musharraf not to go down the Emergency route, the U.S also baled out its current prima donna Benazir Bhutto, who fled to Dubai hours before the military action, ostensibly to meet her family.
But the scuttlebutt in Islamabad and Washington is that Benazir -- and the U.S -- knew the crackdown was coming, and she was advised to leave. How Washington will handle this public defiance by Musharraf of the line it laid down -- besides defying popular opinion in Pakistan -- will unravel over the next week.
Musharraf's journey from Washington's poster boy to possibly its problem child has been gradual but understated. Publicly, the Bush administration still swears by him; privately, it began swearing at him some months back when reports first surfaced that he was holding back on Washington in its war on terror.
But instead of dumping him overnight as it often does with odious dictators, Washington decided that the delicate war on terror business demanded a gradual transition in Pakistan, a country seen as the ground zero of world terrorism.
That was when the Bush administration decided to interject Benazir Bhutto, the discredited former prime minister who was not even getting a low level state department appointment till last year.
But with Musharraf in no mood to relent, Washington is now faced with a sticky new situation in a country now commonly described as the most dangerous place in the world. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->