New Pakistani Leaders Tell Americans There’s ‘a New Sheriff in Town’

By SALMAN MASOOD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The top State Department officials responsible for the alliance with Pakistan met leaders of the new government on Tuesday, and received what amounted to a public dressing-down from one of them, as well as the first direct indication that the United States relationship with Pakistan would have to change.

On the day that the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, was sworn in, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte and the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, Richard A. Boucher, also met with the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, whom they had embraced as their partner in the campaign against terrorism over the past seven years but whose power is quickly ebbing.

The leader of the second biggest party in the new Parliament, Nawaz Sharif, said after meeting the two American diplomats that it was unacceptable that Pakistan had become a “killing field.”

“If America wants to see itself clean of terrorists, we also want that our villages and towns should not be bombed,” he said at a news conference here. Mr. Sharif, a former prime minister, added he was unable to give Mr. Negroponte “a commitment” on fighting terrorism.

The statements by Mr. Sharif, and the cool body language in the televised portions of his encounter with Mr. Negroponte, were just part of the sea change in Pakistan’s domestic politics that is likely to impose new limits on how Washington fights militants within Pakistan’s borders.

That fight, which has recently included American airstrikes in the lawless tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have made sanctuaries, has become widely unpopular, particularly in the last few months as a surge in suicide bombings here has been viewed as retaliation for the American attacks.

Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, also met with the Americans but did not speak to reporters afterward. Husain Haqqani, an adviser who attended the meeting with him, said, though, that the American officials had been given notice that the old ways were over.

“If I can use an American expression, there is a new sheriff in town,” Mr. Haqqani said. “Americans have realized that they have perhaps talked with one man for too long.”

Neither Mr. Negroponte nor Mr. Boucher spoke publicly about the meetings, but the Pakistanis said the Americans expressed willingness to work with the new government.

Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari boycotted the swearing-in of Mr. Gillani as prime minister by Mr. Musharraf at the presidential palace, another sign of their determination to sideline Mr. Musharraf.

Distancing himself from Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Gillani, moments after taking the oath of office, said, “We have to give supremacy to the Parliament so that we can jointly take the country out of these crises.”

He later received a call from President Bush offering congratulations. According to Mr. Gillani’s office, Mr. Gillani told Mr. Bush that “Pakistan would continue to fight terrorism in all its forms” but that a “comprehensive approach” was required, “combining a political approach with development programs.”

The new chief of staff of the Pakistan Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, also seemed to eager to show he was his own man, relieving two generals on Monday who had been close to Mr. Musharraf.

The timing of the American visit was harshly criticized in the Pakistan media for creating the appearance that the United States was trying to dictate policy to a government not even hours old. The two American diplomats met Mr. Sharif as Mr. Musharraf administered the oath of office to Mr. Gillani.

“I don’t think it is a good idea for them to be here on this particular day,” said Zaffar Abbas, the editor of the English-language newspaper Dawn. “Here are the Americans, right here in Islamabad, meeting with senior politicians in the new government, trying to dictate terms.”

An editorial on Tuesday in The News, one of Pakistan’s most-read English dailies, was headlined “Hands Off Please, Uncle Sam.” The Americans should understand, the editorial said, that the newly elected Parliament was now their proper partner, not Mr. Musharraf.

An aide to Mr. Sharif, Ahsan Iqbal, said Mr. Sharif told Mr. Negroponte that the strategy of the partnership against terrorism needed to be reassessed. “Nobody supports terrorism, but there are different ways to counter it,” Mr. Iqbal said.

“Mr. Sharif asked Mr. Negroponte if he thought that using the military was the only solution,” Mr. Iqbal said. “Mr. Negroponte agreed that there are other dimensions that can be adopted.”

Some of those questioning the American visit noted that Pakistan had been an ally of the United States since its independence 60 years ago. Still, they added, many Pakistanis now resented that the campaign against terrorism dominated the relationship.

Washington should learn from the outcomes of the election last month in which Mr. Musharraf’s party was trounced and an alliance of religious parties in the North-West Frontier Province, adjacent to the tribal areas, was also defeated, said Javangir Tareen, the leader of a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, who was a member of Mr. Musharraf’s early cabinet.

“The people have spoken and rejected the religious parties, and at the same time they have rejected the people who will automatically nod to the United States,” Mr. Tareen said.

An independent analyst on the Pakistani military, Shuja Nawaz, who lives in Washington, said Pakistani officials had told him they discouraged the American diplomats from coming this week.

But the Pakistanis were told that Mr. Negroponte was on a trip that included other already arranged stops and that Tuesday was the only possible day for him. Mr. Nawaz called the visit “ham-handed,” and said it could be seen as Washington wanting to keep acting as the “political godfather behind Musharraf.”

The American Embassy in Islamabad said that the two diplomats would stay in Pakistan until Thursday, and that they would meet other officials on Wednesday, though the embassy declined to identify them.

The changes in the military hierarchy by General Kayani seemed intended to display his independence from Mr. Musharraf, who appointed him chief of the military in December. General Kayani reassigned two of the most important corps commanders, the 11 powerful generals in charge of regional posts: Lt. Gen. Shafaat Ullah Shah, the corps commander of Lahore, Pakistan’s second biggest city; and Lt. Gen. Sajjad Akram, the corps commander at Mangla on the Indian border.

Pakistan Rivals Join to Fight Musharraf

By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The leaders of the two major political parties, in an unexpectedly strong show of unity against President Pervez Musharraf, agreed Sunday that they would reinstate judges fired by the president and would seek to strip him of crucial powers.

The power sharing deal, announced by Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the largest party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, and Nawaz Sharif, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, represented another tough challenge to the already waning authority of Mr. Musharraf, a favorite ally of the Bush administration.

The two men, appearing at a news conference together in the resort area of Bhurban, said they would seek to remove the president’s power to dissolve the Pakistani Parliament and his power to appoint the chiefs of the military services. Together, the two parties control just shy of two-thirds of the Parliament after an election last month in which Mr. Musharraf’s party was routed.

The agreement settled key differences that had clouded the post-election atmosphere.

Mr. Zardari, the widower of the slain party leader, Benazir Bhutto, had appeared to waver on Mr. Sharif’s insistence that the judges be reinstated.

For his part, Mr. Sharif had indicated that members of his party would not sit in the cabinet while Mr. Musharraf remained in power.

But on Sunday, Mr. Sharif, reading in English a “summit declaration” said: “The coalition partners are ready to form the governments and the national and provincial assemblies should be convened immediately.”

Mr. Sharif, who was twice prime minister in the 1990s, said his party would participate in a cabinet that would be dominated by Mr. Zardari’s choices. He appeared to swallow the idea that his cabinet members would have to take the oath of office from President Musharraf, an act that Mr. Sharif had said he would oppose.

Mr. Sharif was overthrown in October 1999 in a bloodless military coup by Mr. Musharraf, who was then an army general, and he holds a particular enmity against the president, who he says should resign. Mr. Musharraf stepped down as the head of the army in December.

One of the biggest threats to Mr. Musharraf’s dwindling authority was Sunday’s agreement on restoring the justices, whose dismissal Nov. 3 under an emergency order spawned an energetic anti-Musharraf lawyers movement.

In the last few days, the lawyers had started to mobilize again on behalf of Chief Justice Mohamed Iftikhar Chaudhry and other judges, who have remained under house arrest for the last four months after their dismissals.

After Sunday’s joint announcement, a lawyer who is active in the movement, Athar Minallah, said he was now confident the justices, including Mr. Chaudhry, would be reinstated. “I don’t see any hurdle in the restoration of the judges now,” Mr. Minallah said. “It’s a positive day for democracy in this country.”

The reinstatement of the dismissed judges of the Supreme Court and four High Courts in the provinces represents a special danger to Mr. Musharraf because they would likely be presented with petitions seeking to overturn the president’s re-election in October, lawyers said.

The lawyers movement, led by Aitzaz Ahsan, has argued that Mr. Musharraf’s re-election by the national and provincial assemblies while he held the post of army chief was unconstitutional.

A senior lawyer in Mr. Sharif’s party, Ashtar Ausaf Ali, said Sunday that he had readied a draft of the resolution that Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari said Sunday would be passed by a simple majority within 30 days of the opening of Parliament.

The draft resolution has been approved by senior members of both parties, Mr. Ali said. It refers to the firing of the judges and says in part that it “resolves to undo all illegal and unconstitutional and immoral acts of the usurper and calls upon the chief executive to take all necessary measures for redeeming the honor of the judges and reversing extra constitutional measures.”

The “usurper,” Mr. Ali said, was a reference to Mr. Musharraf.

The other efforts to weaken Mr. Musharraf’s authority were contained the “Charter for Democracy,” a document that Mr. Sharif signed with Ms. Bhutto when the two were in exile several years ago.

The charter is aimed at bringing Pakistan back to a parliamentary system of government that was initially conceived when the country was founded 60 years ago. Under the eight years of Mr. Musharraf’s military rule, the power of the presidency has grown at the expense of Parliament.

In particular, Mr. Musharraf secured a constitutional amendment in 2002 that gave him the right to dissolve Parliament. The Charter of Democracy that the two leaders endorsed Sunday calls for that presidential prerogative to be abolished.

But in order to reverse the 2002 amendment, the Parliament needs to pass a new constitutional amendment, and that requires a two-thirds majority, Mr. Minallah said.

At the moment, the two major coalition partners appear to be 10 votes short of that majority. The strength of Sunday’s accord was likely to attract independents and smaller parties to the anti-Musharraf cause in the parliament, Mr. Minallah said.

The 2002 constitutional amendment under which Mr. Musharraf won the right as president to appoint the chiefs of the military services would also be overturned, Mr. Ali said. The right to appoint the army chiefs would be handed back to the prime minister.

One question that remained unsettled Sunday was the choice of prime minister.

As the leader of the party with the most seats in Parliament, Mr. Zardari would choose the prime minister from his party, Mr. Sharif said.

The names of several prominent politicians belonging to the Pakistan Peoples Party and holding parliamentary seats in the powerful Punjab province have been floated in recent days as possible nominees.

They include Ahmed Mukhtar, a commerce minister in the second government of Ms. Bhutto, and the head of the Servis Group, an industrial conglomerate based in Punjab Province.

Pakistani Police Accuse Militant in Bhutto Death

By CARLOTTA GALL

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Pakistani police formally accused the militant leader Baitullah Mehsud on Saturday of planning the assassination of the former prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

The police filed preliminary charges against Mr. Mehsud and four other suspects, all of whom remain at large, before an anti-terrorism court in the city of Rawalpindi, the chief investigator on the case, Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, told reporters. The court issued arrest warrants for the five, news agencies reported.

Mr. Mehsud is the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, an umbrella movement of Pakistani Taliban groups, and operates out of South Waziristan. He has been accused of masterminding many of more than 60 suicide attacks that have killed hundreds of Pakistanis in the last year.

The Pakistani Army mounted an operation against him and his followers in January, but then agreed to a cease-fire with him before national elections on Feb. 18. Mr. Mehsud has threatened to send suicide bombers against targets in Pakistan but has denied any role in the attack on Ms. Bhutto, who was killed Dec. 27 in a shooting and suicide bombing.

Ms. Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and members of her Pakistan Peoples Party have expressed a lack of confidence in the police investigation and have called for an investigation led by the United Nations into her death. United States officials have said that Mr. Mehsud was behind her death.

The investigator, Mr. Majeed, recently said that Mr. Mehsud gave the equivalent of about $6,500 to a man named Qari Ismail, who belongs to a religious seminary known for its connections to the Taliban, to organize the assassination, the state news agency, The Associated Press of Pakistan, reported.