USA VISIT NOW THINGS HAVE BEEN CHANGE FOR MUSHARRAF
Gilani feels no need to meet Musharraf after US visit
Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has discontinued, may be temporarily, an old practice of meeting President Pervez Musharraf before and after every foreign visit.
"It is not required under the rules that the premier should meet the president every time he embarks on or comes back from a foreign visit," a senior official told this correspondent.
As per its considered policy, the Gilani government kept Musharraf at an arm's length on the prime minister's all-embracing maiden official tour to the United States.
Gilani did not consult with the president before departing for Washington. A day after his return to Islamabad from the US, he left for Sri Lanka to attend a summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), and did not meet Musharraf.
The prime minister also could not hold a session with PPP Co-Chairman Asif Zardari to brief him about his Washington visit for paucity of time. Zardari was extremely busy holding meetings with diplomats and party leaders on Friday, PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told The News.
Before and after his first couple of foreign visits, Gilani made it a point to call on Musharraf to consult with him on his talks with foreign leaders. At the time, the relations between the president and Zardari/government were somewhat normal. However, with the worsening of their ties, Gilani too has stopped meeting Musharraf, toeing his party line.
Informed circles have no doubt about the deterioration of relations between Musharraf and Zardari/government. Zardari's decision to shift the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) under the Interior Ministry's control further irked the president.
These quarters say that Gilani's future meetings with Musharraf about his foreign visits would depend on how the relations between the president and the PPP chief would develop.
However, a day before the prime minister had left for Washington, Chief of the Army Staff General Pervaiz Ashfaq Kayani met both Gilani and Musharraf, and it is believed that the US visit was the main topic of discussion.
Earlier, General Kayani had briefed a marathon session of the heads of the ruling coalition parties at the Prime Minister's House on the operations against terrorists in the tribal areas that have been under the American focus. This briefing was related to Gilani's visit to Washington.
Not only the prime minister has maintained a wide distance from the president, but other cabinet members and a horde of advisers and ambassadors-at-large have also done the same.
No member of Gilani's entourage to Washington especially cabinet ministers and officials has so far met Musharraf to talk about his US visit. Unless Musharraf has got information from other sources about Gilani's talks in Washington with President George W Bush and other senior American leaders, he is totally in the dark about the important deliberations.
During the prime minister's stay in the US and on the conclusion of his visit, there has been not even a worthwhile passing publicly known reference to Musharraf. It is also not known whether the president's relevance or irrelevance was also discussed at any point of time.
Credible officials, privy to the president's views, say that Musharraf is disturbed over Gilani's unimpressive performance in the US. Particularly, they say, he is greatly upset over the malicious campaign against Pakistan premier spy agency, ISI, at different levels and forums in the US as the prime minister's visit was in progress.
Successive prime ministers had been staying away from the presidents when their relations had been highly tense otherwise they had been holding frequent meetings on all domestic and foreign issues. They had been destabilizing each other when they had been on a warpath