Pakistan Stifles Protests Against Press-Lampooned Bush

Bush "agrees with [President Pervez] Musharraf's version of democracy, which is that you can clamp down on anyone who protests against you," politician and former cricket hero Imran Khan told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

He blasted Musharraf, an army general who seized power in a bloodless coup in1999 , as a "toady and a lackey" of Washington.

Khan, who retains a high profile, has been placed under house arrest to thwart a planned protest march to Islamabad from the nearby city of Rawalpindi.

Officials in his Tehrik-i-Insaaf party said up to 150 of their colleagues had been picked up by police.

Similarly, the authorities are still holding the leader of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, under house arrest in Lahore.

Police have also detained up to 350 of the MMA local-level leaders in towns dotted around the country to prevent them from organizing rallies.

Opposition lawmakers are also boycotting a state banquet hosted by Musharraf later Saturday in honor of the visiting American leader.

Bush's first trip to Pakistan is marked by unprecedented security measures with police shutting down the center of the capital and two US Black Hawk helicopters circling overhead.

Police were also posted at intersections and on rooftops in the small, leafy capital.

Bush arrived in Pakistan late Friday, March3 , in the last leg of a South Asian tour that has already taken him to Afghanistan and India.

He arrived a day after a suicide car bomber killed an American diplomat and two other people outside the US consulate in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

Lampooned

The watertight security measures and the detention of opposition leaders may have succeeded in scaling down anti-Bush protests but Pakistani newspapers gave the American leader a taste of public anger.

The Dawn newspaper ran a cartoon depicting a two-faced Bush sharing a cup of tea with both Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Both the News and Daily Times carried critical analysis pieces by guest writers on US foreign policy in South Asia -- respectively headlined "India in Neocon embrace?" and "Can Bush's man in Pakistan weather the storm ahead"?

A Daily Times sister publication, the Friday Times, regularly delivers a satirical column called "Mush & Bush", lampooning the two allies in the so-called war on terrorism, their hidden agendas and their suspected miscommunication.

The latest edition of a weekly widely read by Pakistan's intelligentsia didn't disappoint, mocking US foreign policy, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Bush's diction.

Partnership

Bush told reporters Saturday that General Musharraf remains committed to their partnership in fighting terrorism.

"Part of my mission today was to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice," Bush told a news conference in the Pakistani capital with Musharraf.

The two leaders were brought together after9 / 11attacks on the United States when Pakistan dropped support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and became a US ally.

"The best way to defeat Al-Qaeda is to share good intelligence, to locate them and then be prepared to bring them to justice," Bush said.

Washington triggered massive demonstrations across Pakistan after striking a house in the village of Damadola near the Afghan border on January13 .

It claimed the strike, which claimed the lives of 18 Pakistanis, including women and children, targeted Al-Qaeda's second in command Ayman Zawahiri.

The Washington Post reported January23 that the Pakistani government has been caught between militant extremists and the United States which have both become "more aggressive in their tactics."

http://islamonline.net/English/News/2006-03/04/article04.shtml