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Congress presses Pakistan to keep election plans |
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By Walter Alarkon
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Posted: 12/27/07 04:47 PM [ET] |
Congressional leaders called on Pakistan Thursday to continue with plans for democratic elections despite the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
Both House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined President Bush in urging the country’s leader, Pervez Musharraf, to hold the January 8 parliamentary elections as scheduled.
Boehner said in a statement that the United States’ relationship with Pakistan is key to its national security interests. He added that the assassination “serves as yet another reminder that we must remain vigilant in standing against the enemies of freedom in Pakistan and around the world to ensure that their efforts to thwart democracy will once again fail.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that the Bhutto’s death was a tragic setback for democracy. Bhutto, twice Pakistan's prime minister, returned to the country last October to contest the parliamentary elections.
“Her courageous return to Pakistan this year gave hope to all those concerned by efforts to extinguish rule of law there,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Our nation must stand with the Pakistani people in their struggle for democracy and continue to press the Musharraf government to ensure that the coming election is free and fair.”
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who was in Islamabad Thursday, said he had had plans to meet with Bhutto to ask whether she thought the country could hold free and fair elections in spite of Musharraf's recent decisions to jail a Supreme Court justice and declare a state of emergency. Specter, who was traveling with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, praised Bhutto as “a symbol of modernity” and called her death “a tremendous loss” in an interview on MSNBC.
Specter met with Musharraf earlier on Thursday to ask him about the elections and inquire about the $10 billion in U.S. aid given to Pakistan since the Sept. 11 attacks. He underscored that he still had confidence in Musharraf as a leader.
“The elections are going forward,” said Specter. “He is our best hope here. It is not a perfect situation. Nothing is. But he we have to use the government that is here.”
But Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were less sanguine about the government in Pakistan in the wake of Bhutto’s death.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who earlier in December chaired a subcommittee hearing on U.S. aid given to Pakistan, called on the White House to use diplomacy to ensure a democratic Pakistan and insist that the country be held accountable for the way it uses its money.
“Pakistan's stability and its democratic future are in doubt, and this doubt weakens the security of our country as well,” said Menendez in a statement. “I hoped that the Bush administration would have undertaken a better accounting of the billions of dollars sent to Pakistan in military and social aid. The administration has yet to adequately report if those funds have produced the desired results … evidence on the ground suggests that Pakistan has become less stable since 9/11.”
Foreign Relations chairman and 2008 hopeful Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said they had raised concerns about Bhutto’s security with Musharraf and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, respectively, after a bomb nearly killed her in October. Kerry said Thursday that Bhutto’s death underscores “the perils of a volatile mix of unrest, tension, radicalism, and nuclear weapons.
“Her killing embodies everyone’s worst possible fears and reinforces how tenuous the circumstances in Pakistan really are,” he said. “The loss of Ms. Bhutto demands of the United States and our allies an urgent focus on developing a Pakistan strategy that will crush extremists and provide freedom, peace, and security for the country that mourns her loss today.”
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