September 20, 2008	Saturday	Ramazan 19, 1429

WASHINGTON, Sept 19: The meeting between Presidents George W. Bush and Asif Ali Zardari in New York on Tuesday will focus on combating terrorism, says the White House.

The announcement also underlines two other subjects likely to dominate the Sept 23 meeting — strengthening the economy and fostering democracy in Pakistan.

“The two leaders will discuss efforts to strengthen the bilateral relationship and build a long-term partnership based on common values,” said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

The announcement highlighted Mr Zardari’s status as a “democratically elected president of Pakistan,” repelling criticism that the Bush administration preferred to deal with non-elected leaders such as former president Pervez Musharraf.

The White House also noted that “President Zardari … carries on the legacy of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto,” which again is an effort to emphasise the democratic nature of the new Pakistani government.

But the most important element in this statement — and in the preparatory talks for the Bush-Zardari meeting — is the emphasis on the need to fight terrorism.

The two other key elements — strengthening Pakistan’s economy and fostering democracy — are also linked to Islamabad’s role in the war against terrorism.

As a senior US diplomat — Deputy Secretary John Negroponte — indicated on Thursday, the United States and Pakistan were working quietly on developing a more collaborative approach to combat terrorists hiding in Pakistan’s tribal region.

The need for developing a new strategy stems from almost a national consensus in the US that Pakistan is either unable or unwilling to combat extremists and that the extremists have created safe havens in Fata and also have penetrated major cities.

The US National Counter-terrorism Centre’s most recent annual report claimed that the incidence of terrorism in Pakistan in 2007 was up by 137 per cent over the previous year, with 1,335 terrorism-related fatalities placing the country third in the world on such a scale, after Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Congressional Research Service, which prepares policy papers for US lawmakers, claimed in its latest report that the militants in Pakistan had not only increased their influence but were now also “increasing their levels of coordination and planning.”

The “new generation of militants is comprised of battle-hardened jihadis with fewer allegiances to religious and tribal leaders and customs,” the report said.

US intelligence officials, in recent interviews to the media, described Fata as “the most ungoverned, combustible region in the world.”

“In 2008, the influence of Islamist militants appears to be growing unchecked in large parts of Pakistan beyond Fata, bringing insecurity even to the NWFP provincial capital of Peshawar, which reportedly is in danger of being overrun by pro-Taliban militants,” the CRS report noted.

“Indeed, the ‘Talibanisation’ of western Pakistan appears to be ongoing and may now threaten the territorial integrity of the Pakistani state.”

The CRS report quoted from the Pakistani media to show that “only 30 per cent of the country or less is under the effective writ of the state, down from about half in the late 1990s.”

So the US emphasis on discussing the problem of militancy with Mr Zardari and other visiting Pakistani leaders comes from this national consensus that the situation in Pakistan may go out of control if not taken care of now.

US officials, lawmakers and even think-tanks experts realise that Pakistan needs economic help, and needs it now, if it has to continue as a stable partner in the US-led war against terror.

There is also a realisation that “on the economic front, the newly elected civilian government in Islamabad faces crises that erode their options and elicit growing public resentment,” as the CRS report noted.

“On the political front, an unprecedented ruling coalition including the country’s two leading mainstream parties proved fragile and collapsed almost immediately upon the resignation of President Musharraf, without having enacted any major policies,” the report added.