On the verge of take off?

IS the Pakistan economy waking up from its long slumber and, to mix metaphors, is it on the verge of a take off? Could Pakistan now start to catch up with other economies of South Asia that have been doing so much better in terms of GDP growth?

There are three reasons why I am optimistic about the country’s economic future and two further reasons why I would temper my enthusiasm with some caution. Let us first look at the positive side. At a press conference on June 5, a couple of days before he presented his budget for the 2003-2004 financial year, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz provided preliminary data for the year ending June 30. Most numbers point towards a broad-based recovery from the economic slump that hit the country through most of the ‘nineties.

The rate of GDP growth for 2002-2003 is projected at 5.1 per cent, half a per centage point more than that estimated only a month or so ago. The fact that the rate of GDP increase this year accelerated over that of last year by as much as 50 per cent — from 3.4 to 5.1 per cent — is certainly a cause for celebration. Economic expansion in 2002-03 was the fifth highest in Asia, behind that of China (eight per cent), Korea (6.1 per cent), Iran (six per cent) and Thailand (5.2 per cent) — which implies that at least in 2002-2003, Pakistan joined the league of high-performing Asian economies.

Are conditions now in place for this growth to be accelerated further? I believe that there still remains a gap between the current rate of growth and Pakistan’s structural growth rate.

For that gap to be closed the country must maintain the policy momentum that produced this year’s impressive performance. What is Pakistan’s structural growth rate and how could it be achieved are some of the questions that I will address a little later in this column.

With the population increasing at 2.5 per cent, a 5.1 per cent increase in GDP translates into a growth in per capita income of 2.6 per cent a year. We know from the experience not only of Pakistan but also of other parts of the world that an economy has to grow at twice the rate of increase in population to begin to reduce the incidence of poverty.

This means that for the first time in more than a decade, Pakistan may have brought about a reduction in the number of people living in absolute poverty. The rate of economic growth will need to pick up by another two per centage points before a palpable dent can be made in the incidence of poverty.

Nonetheless, the revival of growth in 2002-03 must have brought some relief to the country’s poor, whose numbers have been increasing by a troubling rate of 10 per cent a year, or nearly four times the increase in population.

Economic recovery seems to have touched most parts of the economy. Agriculture remains the backbone of the economy in terms of the proportion of the workforce it employs and the contribution it makes to the export sector. It saw an increase in output by 4.2 per cent over the year before.

The bulk of this increase came from three major crops — wheat, rice, sugarcane. Of these, rice production increased the most, by 15.4 per cent, from 3.9 million tons in 2001-02 to 4.5 million tons this year. Sugarcane output increased by 8.3 per cent, from 48 million tons to 52 million tons. Output of wheat increased by 4.4 per cent, from 18.2 million tons to 19 million tons. There was, however, a small decline in the output of cotton.

That agriculture remains so heavily dependent on four major crops is not necessarily a good thing. Pakistan has always been producing large surpluses of cotton. It is, in fact, the second largest cotton exporter in the world after the United States. Similarly, output of rice is much beyond domestic demand. It also has surpluses in wheat and sugarcane.

However, it is not in Pakistan’s long-term interest to use its enormous agricultural potential to produce two major crops — wheat and sugarcane — in which the country does not enjoy any comparative advantage.

Also these two crops are heavily subsidized by America and Europe. The country and its farmers would do well to diversify agriculture in favour of such high-value added products as fruits, vegetable and flowers. Moving towards the production of these commodities would bring much larger income to the farmers and earn the country additional foreign exchange.

The composition of increases in the output of large-scale manufacturing shows a similar pattern. Overall, the sector performed impressively with the value of its output in 2002-03 increasing by almost twice as much as in the previous year, by 8.7 per cent compared to last year’s 4.9 per cent.

A significant part of this increase came from an explosion in the production of the automobile sector with output increasing by almost 50 per cent. This industry is flourishing for two reasons: increase in the disposable incomes of the upper classes, which in turn points to some further deterioration in income distribution, and protection available to it against imports.

This does not mean that a vibrant automobile sector is not good for the economy. The incentive structure for the industry should be such as to make it competitive with the rest of the world.

Meeting sharp increases in domestic demand by protecting the industry is not sound economics. The budget of 2003-04 took a step in the right direction by significantly reducing import duties on some automobiles.

Some other parts of the manufacturing sector that performed well during the year included machinery and metal with an output increasing by 18.4 per cent; tires and tubes with production growing by 16.2 per cent; and paper and board with an output increase of 15.7 per cent. However, two of the more important components of the sector — food processing and textiles - did less well than the average. The output of the former increased by 8.5 per cent and that of the latter by only 5.2 per cent. There were reasons why these industries did relatively poorly. Food processing is made up mostly of small businesses that don’t have easy access to capital, are not familiar with new technologies, and are still dependent on antiquated supply chains.

A great deal needs to be done to improve the infrastructure that supports the food processing industry and to have the financial sector — banks as well as the capital markets — become familiar with the financing needs of the businesses operating in the industry. The relatively poor performance of the textile and apparel industries was due to the sluggish international demand for their products. These industries are the ones most deeply affected by both booms and busts in the global economy. A sluggish global economy is taking its toll on this sector.

It is encouraging that the revival in broad-based growth in the economy was accompanied by the creation of “fiscal space” that can be put to use to achieve the two goals Islamabad appears to be aiming at: poverty redressal and development of physical infrastructure. This space was not created by the reordering of expenditure priorities — something that will need to be done in the future — but by reducing the burden of servicing domestic as well as external debts. Two policy initiatives resulted in a sharp reduction in the amount of budgetary resources expended on debt service.

The decision to side with America in that country’s war against international terrorism led to the cancellation of one billion dollars of debt owed to Washington and of rescheduling of some other bilateral obligations.

Second, a sharp reduction in interest rates brought about a significant decline in the resources committed to servicing domestic debt. These moves contributed to reducing fiscal deficit by 0.6 per centage points, from 5.2 per cent of GDP to 4.6 per cent. If in 2003-04, fiscal deficit remains at the same level, the decline in the resources needed to service external and domestic debt will make an additional three per cent of GDP available for expenditure to the government. How should this amount be spent?

This brings us to the question asked earlier about Pakistan’s sustainable rate of growth and how quickly the country could get back to it. Today, Pakistan has what I would describe as “suppressed growth” — growth that is available to the economic system that could be released by sound economic policies, a supporting political environment at home, and an external situation that does not produce any more shocks for the country. My estimate of the amount of growth that remains bottled up in the system is equivalent to 35 per cent of the gross domestic product.

If this could be released over a period of a decade, it could add another three percentage points of growth to GDP, bringing the increase to between seven and eight per cent a year. A seven per cent growth rate sustained over ten years would double the gross domestic product from $68 billion estimated for 2003, to $135 billion ten years from now. Pakistan’s population by 2013 is likely to increase to 180 million. Even then, its income per head in that year could reach $750, some 56 per cent more than at present. This then is the potential that is there waiting to be exploited.

To get to that potential will need greater public sector investment in physical in infrastructure and human resource development. It will also need a greater display of confidence on the part of the private sector which, in turn, should manifest itself in more resources committed by it to the economy’s productive sector. A beginning in these directions may have been made in the budget announced by Minister Aziz on June 7. He indicated a fairly sharp increase in the public sector development programme from $2.1 billion to $2.8 billion, an increase of one-third.

In terms of the share of GDP going into this activity, this is equivalent to more than four per cent, an increase of one per centage point. This is still short of the proportion that was being spent in the 1960s, so far the golden era of Pakistan’s economic history. But a beginning has been made to revive public sector development expenditure.

I like the emphasis on housing in the budget, a sector that could help revive a number of small enterprises associated with the building industry. This should also help increase urban employment and put more money into the pockets of the poor.

The three reasons why we could be hopeful about Pakistan’s economic future include the resumption of broad-based growth, increase in public sector expenditure and focus on at least one sector that could increase employment for the semi-skilled and unskilled components of the workforce. But what are the two pitfalls the economy still faces? I will answer this question next week.

The elastic truth

SIX British prime ministers separate Tony Blair from his predecessor Sir Anthony Eden. They happen to have shared the same Christian name - abbreviated to Tony by the modern-minded Blair and retained as the fuller Anthony by the aristocratic Eden, but more significantly, their prime ministerships will share a common stigma — in Eden’s case, the ill-planned and ill-fated invasion of Egypt in 1956, and in Blair’s case, the illegitimate invasion of Iraq earlier this year.

After Colonel Nasser had seized the Suez Canal in July 1956 and appropriated its assets, the British needed to protect the flow of their oil from the Middle East, half of which came via the canal. Aided by the French who were equally vulnerable, they decided to take on Egypt’s defiant new ruler. Eden’s previous experience in confronting European dictators Hitler and Mussolini had convinced him that it was always important, as he put it, “to reduce the stature of a megalomaniacal dictator at an early stage.”

He sought to do so by using a combination of economic and political pressures against Egypt, including diplomatic coercion through the United Nations and User nations whose interests Nasser had also jeopardized. “But economic and political pressures alone might not succeed in checking Nasser,” Eden admitted subsequently in his memoirs Full Circle (1960). “From the start we had to prepare to back our remonstrances with military action.”

To justify that military action by an Anglo-French force (which the US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused to endorse), Eden resorted to a tactic that he had found in a Turkish proverb: ‘Though your enemy be an ant, imagine that he is an elephant.’ Eden accordingly fabricated Nasser into an international menace of elephantine proportions.

He described him as a threat to world peace, likening Nasser to Hitler, suggesting that he “used the Goebbels pattern of propaganda in all its lying ruthlessness”, and even accused him of supplying his officers with Arabic translations of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. These copies, according to a credulous Eden, were discovered by Israeli soldiers (who would have known who Hitler was) from captured Egyptian troops who most probably didn’t.

Eden had to resign his prime ministership suddenly on the grounds of ill-health before the end of the Suez crisis, but suffered the chagrin of seeing the canal and its lucrative revenues made over (with America’s tacit support) to the Egyptians, and of watching Nasser grow into an articulate apostle of pan-Arab nationalism. It was Eden’s final lesson in a lifetime of international politics, one that Harold Wilson later encapsulated in a devastating aside: Anthony Eden received an expensive education - first at Eton, and then at Suez.

Eden’s resignation however spared him the sort of relentless cross-examination his successors have had to face for similar adventurism - whether it was Mrs Margaret Thatcher over the Falklands war, or John Major with the first Gulf War, or most recently Tony Blair over the recent and as yet unfinished Iraq war.

It is a sign of the times and the new accountability to the media that brings Prime Minister Tony Blair live on television before a parliamentary subcommittee, having to defend himself against the charge that the brief he used advocating pre-emptive action against Saddam Hussein, the ‘dodgy’ dossier prepared for him by his Security Adviser Alaister Campbell, had been ‘doctored’ to justify war.

Somewhere, at some stage between the submission of intelligence by the various agencies and the preparation of the final dossier, key words had been changed - ‘opposition groups’, for instance became for greater emphasis ‘terrorist organizations’ - to convert the sceptical. The threat from WMDs that were supposed to annihilate Israel in 45 minutes but which are yet to be found anywhere in Iraq even three months later had in fact been magnified beyond proportions. Unwittingly, Bush’s and Blair’s intelligence agencies achieved what millions of years of evolution could not: they managed to mutate a Ba’athist ant into an Iraqi rogue elephant.

The security apparatus in every country, civilized or otherwise, operates most comfortably sub-surface. It prefers to function in the dark. The difficulty for every outsider is to be able to detect from within that murky darkness whether it is operating at all. It is only when its serious mistakes or embarrassing failures are brought to light — for example, after President Ziaul Haq’s fatal embarkation from Bahawalpur airport, or at Buckingham Palace when Fagan blundered undetected into the Queen’s bedroom, or at Windsor Castle when Aaron Barschak gate-crashed the 21st birthday of the heir apparent Prince William, or in this crucial Campbell dossier on Iraq — the question: ‘How could it happen’ is replaced by its natural sequitur: ‘Is there any justification in spending so much money on security when it is so obviously ineffective?’

As each day goes by, the original justifications given for the invasion of Iraq recede into obscurity. Only the ashes of doubt remain. Was US intelligence really so inept that they could not accurately gauge Saddam Hussein’s military capability, or the lack of it? Did they really believe that there was an anti-Saddam movement so well hidden underground that it had escaped the attention of Saddam’s security cordon?

Do the Americans really not know so many weeks on, where Saddam and his sons are at present? Do they honestly believe that someone in Iraq will be tempted to betray Saddam or the sons for a paltry $25 million when the Hussein dynasty is known (so newspaper reports have us believe) to have filched 36 times that amount ($900 million) in a single haul from Baghdad’s Central Bank alone? And does no one in the world know where an ailing Osama bin Laden with his frequent need for kidney dialysis is hiding?

George W. Bush and Tony Blair may well have some of the answers to all of the questions, but as they have obviously not been given all of the answers to all of the questions, they are determined to brazen it out, even if that means occasionally distorting the truth. In the last resort, they hope that it will be the weight of their word, not as men of honour but as the president of the United States and as the prime minister of Great Britain, which will silence the world.

History is replete with examples of earlier US presidents lying to cover their crimes or sins — President Richard Nixon over the Watergate break-in; President Bill Clinton over his Oval Office affair with Monica Lewinsky. One resigned to avoid impeachment and the other narrowly escaped it. British prime ministers have been usually more circumspect. Harold Wilson’s affair with Marcia Falkender remained a discreet secret; John Major’s affair with Edwina Currie made the news after he had left Downing Street. British fatalities have been politicians who have attempted to cover their guilt with a lie and were then caught out.

The most tragic example of this kind in contemporary British parliamentary history was the case of John Profumo, who had an affair with a nubile call-girl named Christine Keeler in the 1960s. The British public expressed dismay that he should have cheated on his beautiful but ageing actress wife, Valerie Hobson. They expressed outrage that Keeler had been dividing her favours between Profumo (then war minister) and Colonel Ivanov, the Russian naval attache in London. What brought Profumo down was when finally he admitted lying to the House of Commons.

At the time, the Profumo-Keeler scandal rocked the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (Eden’s successor). It could well have fallen, had it not been for Macmillan’s avuncular and mature handling of the crisis. Persons like Lord Astor, at whose country estate Cliveden Manor many of the illicit assignations took place (including a chance encounter between Ms Keeler and President Ayub Khan in the swimming pool), denied any connection with Christine Keeler. When her companion Mandy Rice-Davies was told of Lord Astor’s denial, Ms Rice-Davies, who had a professional understanding of human frailty, retorted: “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

In one sense, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair today have no option but to be like Lord Astor, lofty and brazen. They have stretched the truth so far that it no longer has any tensile strength left. All they have left to stretch are their own vocal chords, and the patience of the public.

Separate coffins

The miracle did not happen and Laden and Laleh Bijani, the 29-years old Iranian conjoined twins died within 90 minutes of each other after 24 doctors and 100 medical workers had put all their skills into a marathon operation.

Millions of television viewers had waited for every bulletin, both with hope and dread, transfixed and with a prayer in their heart. It was almost, as if, we were all present at the Raffles Hospital in Singapore lending support to the team of doctors, a valiant team performing above and beyond the frontiers of medical science.

Laden and Laleh were well aware of the enormous risks involved, the chances of even one surviving were remote, fifty-fifty were the most optimistic odds.

Dr Keith Goh who led the medical team explained that the operation was much more complex than expected because, although the twins had individual brains, the blood flow through them was too closely intertwined, but it was an immensely saddened Dr. Goh who went through the medical details, his grief stronger than his fatigue and one wanted to tell him that though one miracle had not happened, another had come about, we had regained some of our humanity.

Television channels interrupted their programmes with the breaking-news of the deaths of Laden and Laleh and in our own way, we bowed our heads and observed our own minute of silence and those who could, held back their tears.

9/11, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the war on terror, Iraq, deception on weapons of mass deceptions, civil wars in Liberia and Congo, sectarian violence in Pakistan and a whole heap of other troubles, this has been our ‘daily bread’, the wanton destruction, the waste of human lives, a blood-thirsty world, vengeful victors extracting not an eye for an eye but a thousands eyes for one eye, defiant vanquished biding their time to take revenge, a world trapped in a vicious cycle of madness.

Why then should we anguish over the fate of two lives? Laden and Laleh and not about the thousands who have died in Iraq in a war that was illegal from the onset and based on claims that are proving to be fraudulent? Is it because we were able to identify with the Iranian twins and saw them as human beings? It is this compassion that is missing as soldiers, some of them still boys are sent to battle against an enemy that is considered to be evil, irrespective that the evil is not an abstract but is made up of individuals who are someone’s father or mother or brother or sister.

Those who struck at the twin towers in New York city were guilty of mass murder. What differentiates them from those who carried out indiscriminate bombing raids on Iraq? The terrorists acted out of a set of beliefs. So too did the coalition military forces. In both instances, innocent human lives have been lost. Can a moral case be made out that the flowers we place on the graves of the dead are less fragrant, smells less sweet because they happen to be graves of our enemy?

There is an uplifting message in the death of the Iranian twins, the personal tragedy aside. For a brief moment, there was a demonstration of shared values, a common expectancy irrespective of race, religion and nationality, the fences that we put up and we found ourselves on a bridge. We cheered too for the technology that raised our hopes instead of cowering in fright at the weaponry that this same technology is capable of producing and which can vaporize an entire city at the touch of a button.

The decision is ours on how best to use science. Those scientists who worked at Los Alamos and made the atom bomb were shocked when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

They had no idea of what they had wrought. But we can’t unlearn science, there is no backward step in human knowledge. It says something for humankind that the technology for evil outpaces the technology for good.

The Iranian twins were conjoined at the head but they were separate people. One wanted to become a lawyer, the other a journalist. Just before they went to hospital, they appeared on television and their cheerfulness and wondrous smiles endeared them to us. There was not a trace of anxiety on their faces, almost a casual acceptance of what will be, will be. The decision to go for the operation was theirs, its outcome was not in their hands. They were aware of the dangers and a worst-case scenario that one of them may not survive. Which one would it be?

The twin sisters came from a desperately poor family. The cost of such an operation was beyond even their dreams. But the Iranian government showed that it had a big heart and the doctors waived their fees. To no avail? I don’t think so. It would have been wonderful had the twins lived and gone on to become lawyer and journalist but the main point is that no effort was spared to make the operation successful. It is not heartless to say that it was just as well that they both died. What sort of emotional hell would have opened for the one that had survived?

As an editorial in this newspaper has said that there was a special poignancy in the meaning of “till death do us apart.” Nothing better illustrated this than television pictures of separate coffins being loaded on trucks that would take them to their final journey, to be buried, side by side in their beloved homeland.

Singapore had taken the twins to heart and had made the loss their own. Iran grieved. So too did the rest of the world, displaying in the process a rare dignity. The light may have gone out for the sisters but the light of compassion shone brightly. For every shadow, there is a ray of sunshine.

Confronting post-Iraq realities

PRESIDENT Musharraf’s tour of the UK, US, Germany and France was his longest, foreign trip and came at a critical time. It has covered a lot of ground, with the president laying stress on economic challenges, for which he took the finance minister rather than the foreign minister along as his main adviser.

A trying part of the discussions and exchanges with state leaders, legislators, media representatives, intellectuals and business executives, apart from members of our own diaspora, must have been new concerns and issues assuming crucial importance at a time the world has been changing rapidly following the pre-emptive war against Iraq. One can attempt only a tentative assessment of the outcome, as the post-Iraq world order is still taking shape.

The US having occupied Iraq, after a pre-emptive attack for which the justification has yet to be found, a situation has arisen in which coalition forces are coming increasingly under attack in occupied land. In fact, the situation in both the countries occupied since 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, remain volatile. Terrorist incidents have continued, and the search goes on for many terrorists, on the run, most prominent of whom is Osama bin Laden, suspected to be hiding somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. President Musharraf has won high praise for apprehending about 500 terrorists belonging to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and the appreciation he got from his hosts in the four countries was mainly over this role.

There is another equally important role envisaged for President Musharraf, and this is to hold religious extremism in the country in check and to promote a political order in Pakistan in which moderate forces committed to a progressive and liberal democratic system as well as a market economy, hold sway.

President Musharraf believes in both causes, namely fighting terrorism and promoting a moderate and progressive Islamic order, which he believes is desired by the vast majority of the people of Pakistan. However, he finds himself in the middle of a contest of wills over the constitutional amendments he made prior to the elections held last October. The opposition’s strategy has been to frustrate the functioning of the parliament, which has hardly transacted any business except that of passing the budget for 2003-04.

The post-Iraq scenario also included the offer by India to resume dialogue with Pakistan on all issues, including Kashmir. However, this offer by Prime Minister Vajpayee appeared to be largely tactical, since the only positive steps taken since mid-April when the offer for dialogue was mad, have been the return of the high commissioners to their posts and the gradual resumption of communication links. An agenda for the resumption of talks has not been agreed yet while the actual resumption of dialogue is now being linked to ending “cross-border terrorism” by Pakistan.

During his tour President Musharraf presented Pakistan’s point of view as well as its concerns quite effectively. He pledged commitment to the anti-terrorist campaign but drew a distinction between the Kashmiris struggle for their rights and acts of terror and violance. He also stressed the need to resolve the Kashmir dispute if durable peace was to be established in South Asia. President Bush did acknowledge the need to resolve Indo-Pakistan problems, and made a specific mention of Kashmir as an issue the US would like to see settled peacefully. This was considered to be a significant indicator of US interest in promoting peace and normalization in South Asia.

President Musharraf’s programme was so organized as to facilitate interaction with the widest possible range of leaders and opinion makers. He took with him a few business representatives and had exchanges with leading corporate figures abroad in an effort to promote trade and investment. The results of these contacts may take some time to materialize but the initial response has been quite encouraging.

The major achievement of the visit is supposed to be the three billion dollar package that President Bush announced, to be disbursed over five years. Critics of President Musharraf, including India’s Deputy Premier Advani, calls the aid package an unjustified largesse. Even some US assessments point to Musharraf’s failings, especially his tinkering with the country’s democratic system to consolidate military’s role in politics. However, his hosts, in the four countries, he visited saw his potential role not only in the war against terrorism, but also in fighting religious extremism and for promoting moderation and development.

The conditionalities that have been attached to the aid package reflect the post-Iraq realities, notably Washington’s resolve to have the final say in determining priorities. Putting together diverse comments and assessments, the size of the package is far from impressive. Half of it is earmarked for defence purchases from the US that will serve to improve the quality an effectiveness of US equipment in Pakistan’s armoury, but excludes the sale of F-16 fighters. President Bush was showing sensitivity to Indian concerns in this regard, though other conditionalities relate specifically to US concerns.

The aid package is unlikely to become available till 2005, and will then require annual Congressional approval. Pakistan will be expected to meet US requirements in four areas: preserving a democratic system, apprehending missing terrorists, notably Osama bin Laden, preventing jihadis from crossing into Indian-held Kashmir and severing any nuclear links that are contrary to non-proliferation requirements. The economic aid component of $1.5 billion of the package will be available over five years. Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz would prefer to utilize it to pay off debts owed to the US. The impact on Pakistan’s economy, especially poverty alleviation, has been termed as “insignificant”.

According to figures released by the US’s Central Command, Pakistan has suffered a loss of $10 billion in the aftermath of 9/11. A prominent US expert on South Asia, Prof Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution in Washington, believes that a package of six billion dollars would have been justified, given Pakistan’s predicament and challenges, and the role expected of it in the coming years. This has led some analysts to conclude that the Bush administration is using its post-Iraq clout to act unilaterally and dictate terms to others, including Pakistan.

Speaking of demands, two items have attracted attention as reflecting US expectations. During his visit to the US, President Musharraf brought up the matter of the need to consider the recognition of Israel, after a US-sponsored “roadmap” for a peaceful settlement between the Palestinians and Israel had been agreed by both Arabs and the Israelis. Though he made it clear that the subject required a national consensus, the raising of the issue is highly significant.

The second demand relates to the deployment of two Pakistani brigades in Iraq as peacekeepers. If Iraq were being run by a UN-backed administration, as is the case in Afghanistan, this would have been a different matter. The problem is that Iraq is under the control of a US-led coalition, and the UN has formally disclaimed any responsibility for security there. With Americans and the British suffering casualties off and on in that country, sending troops there without a multilateral cover would risk exposing Pakistani soldiers to the hostility of the Iraqi people.

President Musharraf has to proceed on the US request with great caution, because Pakistan’s record thus far in international peacekeeping has been impeccable. He would have to consult not only the high command of the armed forces, but also the political parties and the parliament. Even India, which received a similar request, has not responded positively, knowing the risks involved in backing what is basically US military occupation of an Arab Muslim country.

In the context of South Asia, India is increasingly regarded by Washington as a strategic partner, though it may not necessarily back all of New Delhi’s ambitions. Pakistan’s primary role is in fighting terrorism and containing domestic extremism. As both countries are nuclear powers, and local tensions can get out of hand, the US attaches importance to facilitating a peace dialogue between the two countries.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

Free speech for firms too

IT’S tough enough now to pull meaningful answers from corporate executives about anything even remotely controversial. But that information could slow even more unless California courts rule swiftly on the reach of free-speech protections for corporations.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in one of its final rulings of the year, declined to deal with a case concerning a suit against Nike Inc., instead sending the matter back to a San Francisco courtroom. A lot is hanging on the outcome, for Nike, the news media and the public.

The lawsuit, which continues to spark constitutional questions, stemmed from allegations that Nike essentially lied to the public when it vigorously opposed claims that it had mistreated workers in foreign plants producing its athletic gear.

—Los Angeles Times