ISLAMABAD — Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will meet with President Barack Obama in Washington today as rising distrust and frustration rattle an alliance crucial to the America- led battle in Afghanistan and the fight against global terrorism.
The Obama administration, eager to show progress in Afghanistan and begin reducing U.S. troops this summer, is ready to increase aid to Islamabad but is pushing Pakistan to step up operations against al-Qaeda and Afghan insurgents on its side of the frontier.
A Pentagon adviser, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive issue, said in Washington that the U.S. may intensify strikes on those bases if the Pakistani army doesn’t act.
“A continued unwillingness on the part of the Pakistani military to show any emphasis on the disruption of the Taliban or to be perceived as being intransigent to facilitate the targeting of al-Qaeda will be intolerable moving through this year,” he said. “There will be a new standard of self-defense in Afghanistan. It’s coming.”
But Pakistan is sinking deeper into economic, political and religious turmoil, and the ruling coalition led by Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party staved off collapse this month by canceling tax and fuel- price increases that it had assured the International Monetary Fund it would enact.
Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief of staff, has told U.S. officials that he doubts the U.S. has a long-term commitment to Afghanistan, despite repeated U.S. assurances to the contrary. Pakistan is eager to prevent its nuclear- armed rival, India, from gaining too much influence in Kabul.
