Pakistan is not the Philippines
Juan Enrile, and with the vice-chief of staff, General Fidel Ramos, that reassured Washington, and overcame White House reluctance to give Marcos the shove.
US officials believe that Benazir Bhutto is trying to follow this script by elevating General Tikka Khan in the PPP, by making overtures to other military officers and by giving variety of State Department and congressional visitors the assurance that she would not be hostile towards the US, that she would "keep the door open" to US aid and that she would not Pakistani negotiating posture toward Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.
These issues were discussed when Bhutto met on May 26 with Representative Stephen Solarz, chair House Sub-Committee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. The significance of this meeting is threefold. Solarz was one of the most vocal congressional critics of the Marcos regime in the Philippines, and a strong advocate of free elections to replace Marcos. If congress is to be persuaded to regard Bhutto as Aquino, Solarz is invaluable.
He is also Jewish and the principal advocate of Israel in the House of Representatives. In that role, Solarz has been a consistent critic of Pakistan's nuclear programme in the past. Yet now, following US press reports of Pakistani breakthroughs in achieving weapons-grade enrichment of uranium and in testing a lead-core nuclear device, Solarz has quietly dropped threats of US sanctions. Although publicly and for media consumption Solarz is still committed to holding Pakistan's aid hostage to the nuclear programme, in practice he believes that preserving the US position in Pakistan is more important now than confrontation over the nuclear issue. In that respect Solarz has moved rightward to embrace the administration's
Finally, Solarz is the self-appointed candidate to be secretary of state if a Democrat is elected president in
To that end, the Brooklyn congressman administration-sponsored "freedom-fighters" in Afghanistan and and seeking headlines as the Democrat who stands up General Zia with Prime Minister Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto in 1977 (DR) 6 democracy in the third world. That is the pose Solarz struck in a widely reported BBC interview of June 14, following his meeting with Bhutto. In for "mid-term" parliamentary elections on a "party basis" in Pakistan, he deliberately appeared endorsing Bhutto's call and throwing the weight of the US Congress against Prime Minister Junejo.
In the weeks that have followed the controversy in Pakistan over this statement, Solarz has tried to preserve the image of the defender of democracy, while emptying his call of its practical political significance. He now says he did not mean elections in Pakistan this year - perhaps, in 1987 government intends but later than 2237
Miss Bhutto hopes" he wrote in the New York Times on July 13. After request for a meeting in Washington, Solarz claims he was too busy, and the prime minister's schedule crowded, to make a private meeting possible. He refuses to mention Asghar who, Solarz's aides say, declined their for a meeting in Pakistan last May.
"Now that democracy has been
Philippines, " Solarz Times article, "the United States needs to consider how best to promote political pluralism in Pakistan if we are going to protect our strategic interests on the subcontinent as effectively as we protected them in south-east Asia. The "we" in this statement is the royal plural. Solarz is setting himself up as the candidate who appears just as tough as the Republicans but more intelligent and sympathetic in dealing with the third world. While Solarz's rhetoric is vague enough to satisfy almost anyone, his pose as the advocate, Aquino in the Philippines, and now Bhutto in Pakistan, is calculated to make him look more potent than the White House or the State Department. It is interventionism with a human face - for US electoral purposes.
Solarz's ambitions are no secret in Washington, and his manoeuvring understood by his Republican opponents, as well as by Ambassador Deane Hinton. In their view, the question of political pluralism has already been settled in Pakistan, and Junejo is the democratic choice to head the government, not Bhutto.
administration does not regard General Zia ul-Haq in the They believe he is a much modest man, with a far more humble corrupt, and more willing to rule by the consensus of his generals. According to US officials, "reformist" in the way they sought to encourage in the Philippines under General Ramos - that is, with professional motivation and morale, and loyalty to the regular hierarchy of command, not to personal cliques and patrons like Marcos and his General Fabian Ver. The US embassy in Islamabad and the administration in Washington also like Junejo, and that he - in alliance with Zia and the military - can be trusted to preserve US strategic interests. Stable understanding trust is the key here. The administration is confident it knows exactly how far the Pakistan nuclear programme has gone, and the point beyond which Islamabad will not go, so long as US aid continues to grow, as anticipated between now and 1993. US officials believe they have a stable understanding with Islamabad, and see no reason to upset that. They do not trust Benazir Bhutto to maintain the aid relationship, and if that fears Bhutto would make, her own decisions on the nuclear programme.
But there is an even deeper reason for the distrust. According to a senior
Benazir's brothers went to the Russians. We would never support her because of that. We would never support Cory Aquino if she or her family went to the Russians." AcPentagon is "torn between an absolute preference for dictators and a dislike of Muslims with the bomb." As an alternative to Zia's martial law administration, Junejo can trusted with the bomb, but if he fails to counteract Bhutto, martial law would once again be the American preference. Accordingly, the Washington consensus is that the present political arrangements in Pakistan are the optimum ones, and they will resist any deal Bhutto may offer them.