US pressure could destabilise Pakistan: Durrani
US pressure, including congressional threats to cut or put conditions on billions of dollars in aid, could destabilise Pakistan, and maybe even bring down President Gen Pervez Musharraf, said the Pakistani ambassador to the US on Thursday. In an interview with Reuters, Ambassador Mahmud Ali Durrani expressed concern that anti-terrorism cooperation among the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan was eroding, and rejected what he said were attempts to unfairly blame Islamabad for an upsurge in cross-border violence. He said that tampering with US aid levels would fan anti-Americanism, strengthen the extreme right and Taliban supporters, be counterproductive, and “create problems for Musharraf to be able to continue the way he is”.
Asked if it might trigger Musharraf’s ouster, he said, “I don’t know. Possibly it could bring him down. It could destabilise the whole country. It could cause mega-problems there. That is possible.” His comments came after top American intelligence officials said the front-line US ally in the war on terror had allowed a resurgence of Al Qaeda and Taliban forces and training camps in Pakistani tribal areas that could someday “lead to another September 11-type attack on the US”. “What I’m worried about today more than anything else is this unhinging of the cooperative relationship ... in this very critical field of (cooperation on) counter-terrorist operations, there seems to be a problem. We need to fix it,” said Durrani.
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