Sharif Eyes Improved U.S.-Pakistan Ties
Baku, May 13 (AZERTAC). PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif is likely to maintain cordial relations with the US and tread “gingerly” with Pakistan`s powerful military, while first bearing down on his country`s serious economic woes if his party wins Saturday`s elections, The Washington Post said in a dispatch, citing the politician`s friends and most loyal supporters.
They also said Sharif had emerged “chastened and mellower” after his ouster from power in 1999, a humiliating stint in prison and several years in exile, according to the dispatch, as US media is increasingly focusing on the historic polls in Pakistan.
Before Nawaz Sharif's deposition in a military coup, they said, he was "power-obsessed, arrogant, impulsive, unwilling to collaborate."
But now, they say, there`s a new Sharif: a mature statesman who is the best choice to lead his crisis-prone country at a time when its seesaw alliance with the United States is more vital than ever to combating extremism and ending the war in Afghanistan.
The Post also said that Sharif built nationalist fervour with nuclear tests in 1998 to counter India`s bomb. “Yet he also strengthened ties with the longtime foe and reached agreements to reduce the prospect of war,” the dispatch said.
“Sharif emerged, at least in some Washington eyes, as flexible when he helped defuse a nuclear crisis in 1999 after former President Pervez Musharraf sent troops to seize territory in the Kargil district of Indian-held Kashmir,” it added.
“Born into wealth, Sharif is a free-market advocate whose return to office would delight Pakistani businessmen, who are reeling from years of energy shortages that have threatened to destroy several industrial sectors,” the Post correspondent Richard Leiby wrote.
The dispatch, headlined: Has Pakistan`s Nawaz Sharif changed his stripes?, said, “Sharif has been a force in politics for 30 years, joined at the hip with his younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who just wrapped up five years as chief minister of Punjab, doling out development funds and public projects to secure his brother`s base. But even with their massive machine, Nawaz Sharif is unlikely to win an outright majority of seats in Parliament and will probably have to broker a coalition.”
Sharif, a religious conservative whom critics describe as soft on militant groups, also has promised to recalibrate Pakistan`s counterterrorism partnership with the United States, which many Pakistanis want to see severed.
Sharif has long advocated civilian supremacy over the military, which remains the dominant force in Pakistan`s foreign policy and national security. The generals have always been wary of him, even more so now because of his recent calls to take Pakistan out of the US battle against extremists, including those sheltering on Pakistani soil.
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