August 11, 2007	Saturday	Rajab 26, 1428

WASHINGTON, Aug 10: US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, Washington’s pointsman for South Asia, will visit Pakistan next week, shortly after President Pervez Musharraf backed away from declaring emergency rule and changed his decision to opt out of a US-sponsored jirga in Kabul.

A State Department told reporters that the trip was previously scheduled but acknowledged that “his regular consultations fall now at a very interesting time.”

Mr Boucher is expected to meet President Musharraf during his two-day stay in Islamabad, officials said.

Earlier on Friday, the Foreign Office in Islamabad announced that President Musharraf has agreed “in principle” to address the closing session of the joint Afghan-Pakistan peace jirga.

In Washington, the president’s decision to opt out of the jirga and reports that he may impose a state of emergency in the country are seen as linked together.

Apparently, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice played a key role in persuading the president to change his mind on both the issues.

Diplomatic sources in Washington say that President Musharraf’s decision had surprised the Bush administration which saw the move as a sign that there were serious cracks in the US-led coalition in the war against terror.

Alarmed at this development, the Bush administration tasked Secretary Rice to repair the cracks. She wasted no time. Hours after Islamabad officially announced that President Musharraf was not attending the Kabul Jirga, and after the US Embassy in Islamabad confirmed that he planned to declare a state of emergency, she got to work.

The Pakistani leader received a call from her at 2 in the morning on Thursday. She spoke with him for 17 minutes but was apparently not fully satisfied with the conversation.

So she called again. This time at 7:30 a.m., waking up President Musharraf barely after four-hour’s sleep, sources said.

The Bush administration, according to diplomatic sources, felt that President Musharraf’s decision could seriously jeopardise the US-led war against terror.

The administration also felt that it would be very difficult to defend in a Congress dominated by Democrats a military ruler who imposes an emergency rule in his country. The administration also felt that President Musharraf’s decision to boycott the Kabul jirga would be seen in Congress as indicating that he is no more willing to cooperate with the United States in fighting terrorism.

The decision to hold the jirga was taken at a joint meeting President Bush hosted last September for Gen Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai. By backing out of it he was signalling that he no longer wanted to go along with the US strategy.

Similarly, if he had imposed emergency rule, the Bush administration could no longer have argued before Congress, as it does now, that Gen. Musharraf is gradually moving towards implementing full democracy in Pakistan.

They argue that the Americans will leave the region sooner or later and Pakistan will have to face the consequences of such an operation for years to come.

Diplomatic observers in Washington concede that it is no longer possible for President Musharraf to satisfy both: his domestic critics and his allies in Washington.

So he decided to opt out of the jirga and had planned to speed up the military operation against the terrorists after imposing emergency rule.

Some, however, disagree with this assessment. They argue that the decision to impose emergency laws in the country aimed more at preventing two former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, from returning home.