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Powell in Pakistan to shore up 'wobbly' alliance

Rupert Cornwell
Tuesday 16 October 2001 00:00 BST
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Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, arrived in Pakistan yesterday to attempt to shore up the critical but increasingly wobbly diplomatic front in America's drive to stamp out Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

The headlines scream war, and television screens are full of missiles, jets and anthrax alarms, of retired generals and experts on bioterrorism. But the long-term prospects of the campaign will largely hinge on preserving a semblance of support in an Islamic world growing edgier by the day. If that is to be achieved, then General Powell's less visible endeavours will be critical.

Cynics would be tempted to define his trip, first to Pakistan, then to India, as "Mission Impossible". Simultaneously, he must shore up Islamabad's reluctant support for the campaign against Mr bin Laden and the Taliban regime it once protected, and seek regional agreement on the shape of a post-Taliban Afghan government on which Pakistan and India have very differing views.

At the same time, General. Powell is urgently seeking to lower the temperature between the two nuclear-armed neighbours over Kashmir - this latter at the very moment India launched an artillery barrage at Pakistani positions on the other side of the line of control in the disputed territory.

Too accommodating a line towards Pakistan, and there will be howls of protest from Delhi, with which Washington is trying to forge a new strategic relationship but which believes the Taliban and Mr bin Laden have been complicit with Pakistan in fomenting the Islamic terrorist attacks across the line of control.

But if General Powell is perceived by Pakistanto be tilting towards its arch foe, then he risks further weakening President Musharraf, who has risked the wrath of the radical Islamic elements inside his country by siding with the US against the Taliban.

According to a poll this week, 83 per cent of Pakistanis back the Taliban in their showdown with the US, and General Musharraf has from the outset not concealed his impatience for the bombing campaign to end as soon as possible.

The eve of General Powell's arrival brought a bizarre indication of how frayed nerves have become with an "interview" given by President Pervez Musharraf to USA-Today and CBS radio in which he urged Washington to "take out" Mullah Mohammad Omar. Hours later however, the Pakistan government strongly denied the interview ever took place.

In another ominous development, the Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif criticised the bombing campaign, saying that Riyadh, another important but deeply ambivalent ally of Washington in its anti-terror coalition, was "not at all happy" with the bombing campaign.

The remark may have been for domestic consumption in a strict Islamic country but it was emblematic of how the relationship between the world's largest oil producer and its US military protector has come under intense strain since the bombing started on October 7 - and only adds to the delicacy of General Powell's mission.

Not only has yesterday's most senior American soldier turned into its most senior diplomat. What he needs to achieve in his new role may well eclipse in importance anything he accomplished in uniform -- even the successful organisation of the war against Saddam Hussein. "The bombs are important," said one retired four-star general here, "but this war will be won by men in striped suits." And he might have added, by the war of ideas and propaganda.

Never has a conflict been more 'assymetrical.' Huge US aircraft carrier groups prowl the Arabian Sea. But American planes rain down not just precision guided bombs and missiles upon an enemy whose only aim is to survive, but also humanitarian food packages and leaflets.

At home, public opinion is gripped not by fear not of invasion by a human enemy, but by millions of spores of deadly anthrax which may, or equally possibly, may not have been let loose by that enemy. All the while the Bush administration, starting with General Powell today in Pakistan, must convince moderate opinion in the Islamic world that the terrorists are the enemy, not the US.

Belatedly "public diplomacy" has become a buzzword in Washington. This week the campaign for Muslim hearts and minds started in earnest, with senior officials - yesterday the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, today - the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - being wheeled out for interviews on the al-Jazeera satellite TV news network based in Qatar, which last week carried videotaped statements by Mr bin Laden and another al-Qaeda spokesman.

But as he embarks on perhaps the most critical mission of his nine months as Secretary of State, General Powell is reaping the bitter fruits of years of neglect and underfunding of the State Department, and the main government information agencies. Nowhere have the repercussions been more evident than in getting out Americaís message to the Muslim world.

Voice of America for instance puts out only seven hours of programmes to Arab countries which are heard, it is estimated, by just 2 per cent of the their populations.

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