Tete-a-tete with the general

ISLAMABAD: Westerners working on issues related to Pakistan's key security matters like the nuclear programme and Kashmir are apparently luckier than many Pakistanis who would like to meet and discuss such issues with the president.

Last week, during the international seminar on 'Prospects of Peace, Stability and Prosperity in South Asia' organized by the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS), two key people, Victoria Schofield from Britain and American Peter Lavoy, got the opportunity of meeting the president.

Victoria Schofield, who works on Kashmir and is the author of 'Kashmir in Conflict', got invited by President Gen Pervez Musharraf for dinner at his residence. Ms Schofield first met the president at the concluding session of the IRS seminar at the Aiwan-i-Sadr.

According to reports, she asked if she could talk to him separately. The president obliged. After a chat of 15 minutes or so, Ms Schofield announced to some guests that she would be dining with the president.

Dr Peter Lavoy, Director of the Naval Postgraduate School's Centre for Contemporary Conflict in Monterey, California, was the other fortunate participant of the IRS seminar to get an exclusive meeting with the president.

Dr Lavoy, who made a presentation on 'Nuclear Stability in South Asia' at the seminar, was visiting Pakistan along with the president's daughter-in-law's uncle, Mr Feroz Hassan Khan, a former brigadier in the Pakistan Army who served as director of the arms control and disarmament affairs division at the Joint Services Headquarters and now has a teaching job at a Pentagon-funded institute on the West Coast and is a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School's department of national security affairs.

Courtesy Brig (retd) Feroz Khan, Dr Lavoy, who speaks and reads Urdu, had a three-hour long session with President Musharraf. Having served as director for counterproliferation in the office of the US assistant secretary of defence for strategy and threat reduction and having been involved in the defence department's efforts to craft US policy towards South Asia in the wake of the 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, Dr Lavoy must have had much to talk about with the president.

Following the Dr A.Q Khan nuclear proliferation scandal early this year, Dr Lavoy co-authored an article with Brig Feroz Hasan Khan titled: 'Rogue or Responsible Nuclear Power? Making sense of Pakistan's Nuclear Practices.' The article appeared in the February issue of 'Strategic Insights,' a monthly electronic journal produced by the Centre for Contemporary Conflict.

The shift in venue of the IRS seminar's concluding session to the Aiwan-i-Sadr made the list of guests rather interesting. Even key non-diplomatic issues were discussed by guests over tea.

For example, a mole reported that a PML woman politician went up to a prime ministerial hopeful (Humayun Akhtar Khan) and said: "I don't know what happens to people when they occupy the seat of prime minister.

I will ask you this question one month after your appointment as prime minister." Reportedly, in response, Humayun Akhtar merely smiled, letting the rumour mills work overtime.

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While it is established by now that Indian High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Menon accompanied President Pervez Musharraf's key aide Tariq Aziz to Amritsar last week for his first meeting with the new Indian National Security Adviser J. N. Dixit, it is not clear if our Foreign Office folks were in the picture.

When approached, the Foreign Office, as expected, remained tight-lipped on this matter. Does the silence mean it was not kept in the loop about the Amritsar yatra? The question remains unanswered.

Meanwhile, in diplomatic circles the Aziz-Dixit meeting ahead of the expert-level talks on nuclear CBMs in New Delhi over the weekend is seen as a good omen. It is believed that the two sides will not just go through the motions but produce some positive results on this crucial front.

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In the Philippines, 40 per cent of diplomats are women and out of the 22 members of the cabinet, nine are women. Notably the women cabinet members hold key portfolios such as finance, budget, justice and foreign affairs. This transpired during a conversation with Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary and Cabinet Minister Ms Delia Domingo Albert, who was here earlier this month.

The key to women's empowerment was to educate them, she observed, pointing to the impressive 98 per cent literacy rate in the Philippines. Ms Delia, who was here to revitalise bilateral ties with Pakistan, hastened to add that it had nothing to do with the fact that they have a woman as head of state. "It was not the gender but it was who was next in line that came into the picture" is how she put it.

An accomplished career diplomat, Ms Albert has been involved in active diplomacy for three decades and has represented her country at the UN. She has the distinction of being the first woman secretary of foreign affairs of the Philippines and in the Asean region.

On a personal note, she said her gender helped in diplomacy but cautioned that as a woman, "you are always under watch" and hence have to maintain your credibility. Her comment reminded one of a similar view by a serving Pakistani woman diplomat who said: "As a woman you are always on probation."