ISLAMABAD, Dec 17: Leaders of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) have expressed dismay over remarks reportedly made by US ambassador Ryan C. Crocker on the state of democracy in Pakistan and about the democratically-elected governments of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.

The alliance has sent a letter to the US Embassy in Islamabad to register their “protest” against the remarks, the acting parliamentary leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told a group of reporters on Saturday.

The letter was signed by Chaudhry Nisar and People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) chief Makhdoom Amin Fahim on behalf of their respective parties.

On Dec 12, US Ambassador Ryan C Crocker was quoted as telling senior journalists in Islamabad that “his country wanted a sustainable and instutionalized democracy in Pakistan, but clarified he was not talking about the kind of a democracy [that] Pakistan had in the last decade.” The US envoy had also reportedly said that “the return to such governance would not be fulfilling that requirement”.

According to Mr Crocker, civilian governments had been unsuccessful in achieving the objective of stable governance.

At the same time, he lavished praise on Gen Pervez Musharraf’s steps to establish democracy in the country, saying: “Gen Musharraf had outlined the vision of a sustainable, stable and true democracy in Pakistan” and that he believed in him.

Through the letter, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said, the two parties had “strongly protested” against the remarks of the US ambassador in support of “dictatorship”. On the one hand, he said, the US ambassador claimed that his country believed in people-to-people interaction and relationship and not in any individual, and on the other hand it was supporting dictatorship in Pakistan.

Chaudhry Nisar said they had told the US ambassador that “people-to-people relations could not be strengthened by supporting dictatorship”.

A senior PPP parliamentarian told Dawn on condition of anonymity that the PPP and the PML-N had taken serious notice of the ambassador’s remarks about their leadership and “the tone of the letter sent to the embassy was very harsh”. The PPP leader said the US ambassador had been told that “the type of democracy his country was supporting in Pakistan was facing a severe challenge from democratic forces in the country”.

“The US ambassador had been advised to refrain in future from passing any remarks about their leadership,” the PPP leader said.