May 26, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 09, 1428

WASHINGTON, May 25: The US administration should not accept President Pervez Musharraf’s decision of not allowing former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif back into the country to contest the 2007 elections, says a leading US newspaper.

“The administration has been endlessly forgiving the strongman even as he has failed again and again to meet his commitments,” commented the Washington Post in a lead editorial titled “Pakistan’s Peril.”

“If Mr Musharraf is now allowed to isolate himself behind riot police and militia forces while shunning secular democrats, he will set the stage for just the sort of nightmare scenario in Pakistan that has motivated US support for him since 2001,” the Post said.

The newspaper noted that after nearly eight years in power, Gen Musharraf’s writ over the country appears to be weakening.

“Mass demonstrations broke out against him this month in Punjab, the country’s political heartland; tens of thousands at a time are turning out to cheer suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar M Chaudhry who tried to investigate human rights abuses and then rejected the General’s demand that he resign,” the Post observed. “Extremist groups, including the Taliban, are steadily strengthening, especially in areas near the Afghan border.”

The newspaper also pointed out that the support for the Musharraf government in the US Congress, which has signed off on more than $10 billion in aid since 2001, was steadily fading amid persistent reports that the Pakistani army is failing to stop, and may even be supporting, Taliban operations against US troops in Afghanistan.

The paper noted that Gen Musharraf’s response to the developing situation in the country has been to unleash the party militias and the riot police.Arguing that now was the time for Gen Musharraf’s “dogged supporters” in the Bush administration to worry about these developments, the Post said: “One reason the General is unpopular is his alliance with the United States.”

The paper claimed that the situation had reached a point where if Gen Musharraf was to go now, “the candidates to succeed him and control Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal include Islamic fundamentalists and anti-Western generals.”

Urging the Bush administration not to support the Pakistani government any longer, the paper said: “Gen Musharraf appears inclined to use force to bolster his regime -- demonstrators have been attacked by party militias or police in several cities -- and that may seem preferable to the extremist alternatives.”

The newspaper warned that the use of force will not help the Pakistani president. “Force is not the General’s only option or the one most likely to succeed,” the paper said, noting that Pakistan has a strong democratic alternative, in the form of two large secular political parties that between them governed the country for most of the 1990s.