US and Islamist parties meet

ISLAMABAD – US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has started reaching out to some of Pakistan’s most fervent Islamist and anti-American parties, including one that helped give rise to the Taleban, trying to improve Washington’s image in the nuclear-armed state.

USIslamist-AP Mr Obama’s special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, is initiating dialogue between the United States and religious parties previous administrations had largely shunned, both sides said.

‘The purpose is to broaden the base of American relations in Pakistan beyond the relatively narrow circle of leaders Washington has previously dealt with,’ explained Vali Nasr, senior adviser to Mr Holbrooke.

John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations during the Bush presidency, questioned Mr Holbrooke’s timing for trying to engage Taleban sympathisers on the eve of elections in neighbouring Afghanistan, where US forces are battling the hardline Islamic group.

‘As a general proposition, democracy in Pakistan is fragile enough now that negotiating with people that some on the democratic side of the Pakistani spectrum would think themselves are terrorists strikes me as fairly risky,’ Mr Bolton said. ‘What we ought to be doing is making sure that our ties with the military are strong because the gravest risk is radical penetration of the military.’

At one of this week’s sessions, Liaqat Baloch, a top member of the religious, right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party, told Mr Holbrooke he welcomed the new administration’s public change in tone towards Muslims around the world.

But Baloch said he was disturbed to see ‘no change in practice’ in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Mr Obama has stepped up military operations against the Taleban on both sides of the border.

Mr Holbrooke invited JI, whom some US officials compare to the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to visit the heavily guarded American embassy compound in Islamabad, seeking to dispel long-running rumours that thousands of US Marines would be based there.

Mr Holbrooke, who has been meeting mainly Pakistan’s political and military establishment, called his nearly hour-long session with Baloch’s Jamaat-e-Islami ‘the most intellectually sustained debate I’ve ever had in this country’.

But immediately after their meeting, Baloch and his delegation took to the streets, leading a protest against US policy in Pakistan and the region. — REUTERS

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