[Mr.
Zardari’s visit to the summit meeting — after an 11th-hour invitation intended
as a conciliatory gesture — went well for neither the United States nor
Pakistan. It not only failed to resolve a six-month deadlock over the
transportation of supplies to Afghanistan, but it also underscored the
poisonous distrust and political chasms in an uneasy alliance that is central
to the Obama administration’s plan to end the war in Afghanistan.]
By Steven Lee Myers And Eric Schmitt
 |
Pool photo by Philippe Wojazer
President Obama refused to hold a
meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan,
second from right, in Chicago.
|
President Asif Ali Zardari complained about the difficulties of
unifying Pakistan’s fractious political parties to support a more aggressive
campaign against extremists and noted it was an election year in both
countries.
“We don’t have the resources or control over these groups,”
he said, referring to militants based in Pakistan’s borderlands. He added,
“We’re backed into a corner because you haven’t apologized” for a NATO attack in
November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at an outpost on the border with Afghanistan.
Reflecting the Obama administration’s mounting frustration,
Mrs. Clinton told him that the only way countries have defeated insurgencies
like the ones threatening Pakistan and its neighbor was by forging national
unity and exercising political will.
“It’s going to take leadership,” she told a subdued Mr.
Zardari, according to officials from both countries familiar with the hourlong
meeting at McCormick Place last Sunday. “It’s going to take leadership from you
and others.”
Mr. Zardari’s visit to the summit meeting — after an
11th-hour invitation intended as a conciliatory gesture — went well for neither
the United States nor Pakistan. It not only failed to resolve a six-month deadlock
over the transportation of supplies to Afghanistan, but it also underscored the
poisonous distrust and political chasms in an uneasy alliance that is central
to the Obama administration’s plan to end the war in Afghanistan.
“You have to look at the meeting in context of whether it’s
worth the investment having Pakistan as a partner,” one Obama administration
official said bitingly. The best that that official could say of Mrs. Clinton’s
meeting with Mr. Zardari was that it was “not a total waste” since she was able
to deliver such a pointed message.
Far from moving toward some kind of easing of tension,
relations have only worsened since then. On three days last week, American drones fired missiles at what were thought to be insurgent
hide-outs in northwestern Pakistan, ending a brief lull heading into the NATO
summit meeting and ignoring demands by Pakistan’s Parliament to end the strikes
altogether. And on Wednesday, a court in Pakistan convicted a doctor who helped the C.I.A. in the search for Osama bin Laden,
sentencing him to 33 years in prison for treason.
The next day the Senate approved a new cut of $33 million
in American military assistance to Pakistan, $1 million for each year of his
sentence.
The failed diplomacy of the last week highlighted the
inability of both countries to repair a relationship that was badly frayed by
the secret raid that killed Bin Laden in May of last year and then was nearly
ruptured by the NATO attack in November. It has raised questions over whether
even a more limited security relationship between the two countries is even
possible.
“It’s an up-and-down relationship,” Defense Secretary Leon
E. Panetta said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Officials from both countries expressed a desire to resolve
their differences, but it appeared that both were drifting ever farther apart.
“We need to scale back expectations for each other,” Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s
ambassador to the United States, said in an interview.
For Mr. Zardari, the visit to Chicago was a political
disaster at home, exposing the increasingly embattled president to blistering
criticism. In a clear diplomatic slight, President Obama refused to hold a
meeting with him, speaking to him for only a few minutes on the way to a group
photograph of the world leaders who came to Chicago to map out an end to the
war in Afghanistan.
While Mr. Obama later expressed support for “a successful,
stable Pakistan,” he added, “I don’t want to paper over the differences there.”
In Pakistan, Imran Khan, a former cricket star who has
become one of the most popular opposition leaders, declared the
visit a disgrace to the country, and accused the United States and
NATO of ignoring the demands of its Parliament and its own sacrifices in the
fight against terrorists. “This is not our war,” Mr. Khan said of Afghanistan,
“so let’s get out of it.”
The tensions over Afghanistan, over Pakistan’s perceived
unwillingness to strike against insurgents within its borders and over the
continued American drone strikes have resisted a year of efforts to ease them.
Mrs. Clinton has now met Mr. Zardari three times since the Bin Laden raid;
after the first two she had expressed hope that the relationship was “back on
track,” as she put it in Islamabad in October.
After Pakistan’s Parliament completed a review of relations
with the United States in April, Mrs. Clinton and others in the State
Department expected that they could reach a new understanding on security cooperation,
which has been more or less delayed since November. A series of American
delegations visited officials in Pakistan — led by Deputy Secretary of State
Thomas R. Nides and Marc Grossman, the administration’s special envoy — only to
find Pakistan changing its demands in response to domestic politics and, some
said, Mr. Zardari’s weakened position.
The Pakistani Parliament demanded an unconditional apology
for the November attack and an immediate end to the C.I.A. drone strikes, but
it also paved the way for a reopening of NATO supply lines through Pakistan,
though at a cost that the administration and members of Congress viewed as
extortion.
A brazen attack
on Kabul and other Afghan cities in April by the Haqqani network, Islamic
militants operating from a base in Pakistan, simply hardened the
administration’s stance, especially on the apology, something that also would
be politically risky for Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign.
Even so, a team of American specialists remained in
Islamabad to try to hammer out an agreement to reopen the supply routes.
Pakistan, stung by the suspension of American military assistance last year,
demanded a fee of $5,000 for each truck that crossed its territory from the
port in Karachi to Afghanistan. Before the November attack, NATO had paid $250.
The Pakistanis also asked for an indemnity waiver in case
American cargo is damaged, for some repairs to the port of Karachi, and for
road improvements near the border crossings, the senior American official said.
Before the summit meeting in Chicago, the two sides
appeared to narrow the difference, with Pakistan asking for $3,000 and the
United States offering to pay up to $1,000. In hopes of finishing the deal,
NATO extended a late invitation to Mr. Zardari to attend, but even the narrow
issue of supply routes proved too divisive to resolve.
By the time Mrs. Clinton sat down with Mr. Zardari last
Sunday, the administration had lowered its expectations. Tactically, the
officials said, she pressed him to tell the NATO leaders that he was committed
to resolving the dispute over the transit of supplies, which he did in a closed
meeting the next day.
Most of Mr. Zardari’s meeting with Mrs. Clinton was spent
on his difficulties unifying the country’s political blocs. He responded
defensively. “Zardari made it clear it’s an election season where he is, and he
knows it is here, too,” one administration official said.
Mrs. Clinton suggested specific ways to overcome the
differences over counterterrorism operations — and to sell them to politicians
in Pakistan. The officials declined to discuss those ideas, even on the
condition of anonymity. The meeting ended without any clear commitments.
“The secretary,” the official said, “sought to make this
very clear: Are you guys ready to move and get your whole leadership on the
same page? Because sometimes it looks to us like you’re not.”
