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WASHINGTON: A US military commander will be the first to visit Islamabad as the United States and Pakistan begin the process of re-engagement, mainly because Pakistani political leaders will be out of the country later this month.
Gen James Mattis, commander of the US Central Command, is expected to arrive in Islamabad in the last week of March for a series of meetings with Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and other senior Pakistani military leaders.
US Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides and USAID chief Rajiv Shah will visit Islamabad in early April after President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani return from their visits to Tajikistan and South Korea.
President Zardari’s decision to attend the 5th Regional Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan in Dushanbe on March 26 and 27 already indicates Pakistan’s desire to stay engaged with the United States on this important issue.
Media reports had suggested earlier that Pakistan may opt out of this conference to show its displeasure over a move in the US Congress to highlight troubles in Balochistan.
Prime Minister Gilani will be in Seoul to attend the 2012 nuclear summit.
US President Barack Obama, who initiated nuclear summit meeting two years ago, will also attend the conference, raising hopes that Prime Minister Gilani may have an informal meeting with him on the sidelines of the summit.
The US military, however, appears keen to go ahead with a planned visit to Islamabad for consulting Pakistani generals who will be in the country during this period.
The parliamentary review has been delayed and is now being held on March 20. The joint session of parliament will finalise recommendations for reengaging the United States and the Pakistani high command has already said that it will follow those recommendations.
In an interview to a US television channel, the US military chief explained how he saw the two countries rebuilding their relationship.
Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told PBS News, he believed Pakistan was a stable country, although it faced serious economic challenges.
“Their economic forecast is what probably gives me the greatest cause for concern,” he said. “It’s a fairly dire economic condition.”
The country also has an “extraordinary large population” and combined with “elements of religious extremism … it does make for a very challenging future,” he said.Gen Dempsey also noted that the two countries differed with each other over what posed the greatest threat to Pakistan.
“They still believe that India poses their greatest existential threat, although we’ve been pulling them closer to our view, which would suggest that terrorism is as much a threat to them as it is to us,” the general said.Gen Dempsey said that Gen Kayani was his classmate in a US military school and he had reasons to believe that Gen Kayani was very upset when he found out that Al Qaeda chief was found and killed in Pakistan.
“That doesn’t mean that there may not have been others in the country” who had this knowledge, the US general said.
The US military chief said Gen Kayani faced some internal issues which he has to manage politically.
“Their internal domestic politics, and it’s challenging, and so yeah I do think that Gen Kayani, when we have our conversations, I think that he will do what he can, which may never be what we would like,” Gen Dempsey said.
Gen Dempsey said Pakistan needed to do more in the war against terrorism, particularly about the alleged safe havens in Fata.
“Part of that may be Pakistani will, I mean, that’s to be determined. Part of it is probably their capability… I believe they will do the best they can but it may not be enough for us,” he said.
Acknowledging that the relationship between the two countries has been a challenging one, he said the two sides were “in conversations about our mil to mil relationship, about our foreign military sales, about some of the common challenges of terrorism”.
And despite the challenges, “I’m personally optimistic that we can reset the relationship in a way that meets both of our needs,” he said.
