ISLAMABAD/QUETTA, 15 June 2007 — Top US diplomats are visiting Pakistan this week for talks with President Pervez Musharraf on holding free and fair elections due later this year, officials said yesterday.
Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher are expected to steer clear of a political crisis over the suspension of Pakistan’s top judge.
But Boucher — who on Wednesday met Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri and members of Pakistan’s election commission — said the United States wanted the upcoming general election to be fully democratic.
“The elections should be free, fair and transparent. They should meet international standards,” the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) quoted Boucher as saying at a reception in Islamabad late Wednesday. Boucher said that American observers would help monitor the election.
He also discussed the election process with MPs from the ruling party and the opposition.
Negroponte, the former US director of national intelligence, is due to visit Pakistan today for talks with the country’s leaders, according to sources.
Pakistan’s once fractious opposition has united over Musharraf’s March 9 ouster of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Analysts say Washington is keen to shore up Musharraf’s administration amid the judicial crisis because it regards him as a bulwark against extremism in his nuclear-armed nation.
Boucher, who visited the southwestern city of Quetta yesterday, was told by Pakistani officials that Islamabad was trying its best to plug its long, porous border with Afghanistan and they denied Taleban leaders were hiding in the country.
Cross-border incursions by the Taleban have long been a bone of contention between Pakistan and Afghanistan, two major US allies.
“We are taking as many steps as possible to secure the border with Afghanistan,” an official quoted the chief minister of Balochistan province, Jam Mohammad Yusuf, as telling Boucher in the provincial capital, Quetta.
Yusuf also rejected Afghan accusations Taleban leaders were directing the Afghan insurgency from Quetta. “There are no Taleban leaders in our province,” the official quoted the chief minister as saying.
“There is no Taleban headquarters in Balochistan nor are the Taleban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar or Osama Bin Laden in Balochistan,” Yusuf told Boucher.
Afghan officials and some NATO commanders have alleged that Taleban leaders are based in the city and using outposts in Pakistan to launch cross-border attacks on international and Afghan troops.
Boucher visited a local school and saw voters’ list placed by the election commission.
He praised Pakistan’s role in the “war on terror” and agreed that there was no solid evidence about Mullah Omar’s presence in Balochistan.
The US official later visited the Pakistani border town of Chaman, where he was briefed about efforts to check illegal crossing of the 2,500-kilometer wide border with Afghanistan.
