The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Washington

Just months ago, the United States publicly championed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as an "indispensable" ally. Now, officials barely mention the man the Bush administration once promoted as essential to holding together a nuclear-armed country deemed crucial to the U.S.-led fight against extremists in South Asia. The new tone comes as the United States works to gain the favor of Pakistani opposition forces that won big in last month's parliamentary elections and as Musharraf's grip on power weakens. The newly empowered politicians are promising to reinstate fired judges who had questioned the legality of Musharraf's continuing in office. The United States says it still intends to work with the former army chief, whom Pakistani lawmakers elected to a five-year presidential term in October. But the Bush administration appears to be shifting from making support for Musharraf the core of its Pakistan policy, which many U.S. lawmakers and Pakistani opposition leaders have long wanted. Robert Hathaway, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Asia program, said Bush officials will not abandon Musharraf, "but clearly they have to, in rather dramatic fashion, alter what had been their previous practice of putting all of the American eggs in a Musharraf basket." Pakistan's "new realities," Hathaway said, "dictate that they deal with Islamabad on a much broader basis if they wish to have any sort of influence in Pakistan." In Feb. 18 parliamentary elections, the parties of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, finished first and second. The Pakistan Muslim League-Q, a party loyal to Musharraf, lost heavily.