President George W. Bush, right, with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in the Oval Office in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 4. (Photo: AFP)

WASHINGTON: Despite the recent pullback of Pakistani troops from tribal areas where some believe Osama bin Laden may be hiding, President Bush told Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, on Dec. 4 that the troops had “been incredibly active and very brave” in rooting out Al-Qaeda terrorists.

The comments came in a rare visit to the White House by a foreign leader, during a stopover on Musharraf’s way to Britain. “The president has been a determined leader to bring to justice not only people like Osama bin Laden,” Bush said, “but to bring to justice those who would inflict harm and pain on his own people.”

“Remember, this is a man whose life had been threatened by, and still is threatened by, Al-Qaeda leadership,” he said, referring to the two assassination attempts on Musharraf last year.

Bush’s comments were a continuation of the White House’s strategy of using visits like this to bolster Musharraf’s leadership and to play down the tensions between the United States and Pakistan. Those tensions have grown more acute, despite the public pronouncements.

White House and intelligence agency officials complain that the flow of information from Pakistan about the nuclear smuggling network built by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, has slowed to a trickle. Musharraf has refused to allow the United States or the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring body, to interview Khan directly, insisting that they pass along questions to Khan through Pakistani officials.

Many U.S. officials believe that is a way of filtering both the questions and the answers, perhaps to make sure that no current government or military officials are implicated in an investigation into the network’s role in arming Iran, North Korea and Libya. “Everyone knows that this reaches well into the Pakistani leadership,” one European diplomat involved in the investigation said last week, “and the Pakistanis are being very careful.”

But a senior administration official said on Dec. 4 that Bush raised the issue only obliquely, asking Musharraf to assure that there was continued cooperation. The official said Musharraf “didn’t seem aware that there was any problem,” and promised to look into it.

There was apparently no direct discussion of Musharraf’s decision not to give up his role as the head of the Pakistani military, as he had promised more than a year ago.

Bush used the visit on Dec. 4, in fact, to praise the expansion of democracy in the country.

“There are some in the world who do not believe that a Muslim society can self-govern,” Bush said. “Some believe that the only solution for government in parts of the world is for there to be tyranny or despotism. I don’t believe that. The Pakistan people have proven that those cynics are wrong.”

Musharraf, according to a senior administration official who sat in on the meeting in the Oval Office, brought along his commerce minister, and Bush made plain that the Pakistanis had their own complaints about the relationship with the United States, mostly involving trade restrictions.

Bush also made no announcement of any impending U.S. agreement to sell surveillance airplanes, anti-tank missiles and other weapons to Pakistan. The issue has been a tense one with India. The senior official declined to answer any questions about the U.S. position on those sales, which include F-16s, saying, “It came up, as it has in past meetings, and probably will in future meetings.”

[Vasantha Arora adds: Soon after his talks with President Bush, the Pakistan president said he had raised the issue of F-16 fighter jets during their parleys in a bid to help upgrade the defense needs of his country. “We discussed the F-16 issue. That is all I would like to say, thank you,” Musharraf commented when asked about the prospects of Pakistan getting the long-sought after fighter jets. Pakistan would like to buy up to 25 of the F-16s, which cost around 25 million dollars each, by mid-2005, but the White House has so far downplayed any imminent F-16 deal at the current talks.

Meanwhile the U.S. Senate late on Dec. 4 approved a 388-billion-dollar budget which includes military aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The share of Pakistan in the budget allocation meant mainly to help its armed forces in hunting down suspected Al-Qaeda members along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Other key Bush administration officials present during his talks with Bush and later with outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell were: Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.]

(By Permission, The New York Times)