A leading US daily has criticised President George W Bush for trusting his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf to build a long-term bilateral relationship while ignoring the fact that the general has 'consistently failed' to live up to his promises.
Though he once criticised what he saw as the excessive personalisation of diplomacy by his predecessor, The Washington Post said President Bush continues to lean heavily and exclusively on a handful of heads of state to advance crucial American interests.
The daily said in Afghanistan the White House counts on one man, Hamid Karzai, who rules little more than the palace he lives in. Now Bush has placed another huge stack of chips on Musharraf, the self-appointed president of Pakistan, which since 9/11 has become the world's single largest haven of Islamic terrorists, including, most likely, the fugitive Osama bin Laden.
Last week, Bush invited Musharraf to Camp David and offered him $ 3 billion in military and economic aid over the next five years, as well as what a White House briefer called 'a long-term commitment to build a relationship,' the The Post said.
Saying that it was a huge boost for a man who overthrew Pakistan's last elected civilian government in a coup, presided over his country's delivery of nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, directed its last military offensive against India, and broke his promises to restore democracy and crackdown on extremist Islamic groups, the daily asked is it fair to ask what the Bush administration will get in exchange?
Though Musharraf's willingness to cooperate with the Pentagon and CIA, says The Post may be enough to convince many in the Bush administration that the general is their best chance in an unstable and dangerous country with its own nuclear arsenal, the reality is that he has consistently failed to live up to his promises.
The extremist groups Musharraf says he disbanded have been reconstituted under other names; Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants still use Pakistan as a base to attack US forces in Afghanistan; Islamic militants continue to infiltrate into Kashmir, the daily said.
If the history of the past three years is repeated, Washington will get, at best, only partial compliance, the daily said adding Bush has chosen to overlook Musharraf's weak and disturbing record.