Musharraf's defeat could offer some benefits to U.S.

WASHINGTON -- At first glance, the resounding defeat of President Pervez Musharraf's party in Pakistan's parliamentary elections might seem a setback to the U.S. fight against terrorism.

After all, Musharraf has been an important ally against al-Qaida. The election results could bring heavy public pressure to bear on the Pakistan's next government to cooperate less with Washington.

But there also were reasons for optimism. Pakistan appeared headed toward its first elected civilian government after eight years of military rule. While top Musharraf supporters were repudiated, the winning opposition parties are politically moderate. The vote was a rebuke to Islamist parties, which lost control of a province where al-Qaida and Taliban fighters have sought refuge.

The outcome held the possibility of restoring order in a country whose population is weary of violence.

President Bush, on a trip to Africa, said, "It's now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government. The question then is: Will they be friends of the United States? I certainly hope so."

U.S. officials were cautious in trying to piece together the Pakistan puzzle. There are questions about whether Musharraf can survive in power and who will become the country's new prime minister.

"We need Pakistan as an important ally," Bush said. "We've got interests in helping make sure there's no safe haven from which people can plot and plan attacks against the United States of America and Pakistan."

Bush's trip was rocked by three major foreign policy developments in as many days: the elections in Pakistan, Fidel Castro's resignation as president of Cuba after nearly a half-century in power; and Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia.

Discussing Pakistan, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, "Nothing is more important than giving the moderate majority a clear voice and a clear stake in the system." Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said the election offered the U.S. a chance to reshape its policy so it is less centered on a single leader.

Musharraf and the United States have had a strained relationship at best.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has lionized him as an essential ally, a politically moderate leader capable of maintaining order in the world's only nuclear-armed Islamic country.

Under U.S.-prodding, he reversed Pakistan's support for the fundamentalist Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan and worked to round up al-Qaida militants and the Taliban tribesmen who helped them.

But his path to power -- through a military coup in 1999 -- always seemed at odds with Bush's agenda to spread democracy. Also, some critics have questioned the depth of Musharraf's recent commitment to hunting down militants and pressing the search for Osama bin Laden. Since the 2001 attacks, the U.S. has given Pakistan some $10 billion in aid, most of it for the military.

At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday that the U.S. ambassador in Pakistan has been in touch with representatives from the two main opposition parties that will form the new government. As to Musharraf's future role, McCormack said, "Well, he's the president of Pakistan. And I would expect that we are going to work with him ... and that we would hope to work with whatever government emerges as a result of this election."

Musharraf is unpopular in his own country, even after he relinquished his rank of army general last year and retired from the military. That unpopularity has stoked anti-American sentiment and threatens to complicate U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in fighting terrorism.

Rick Barton, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the role Musharraf will play in the new government is an open question. Should Musharraf voluntarily relinquish power, "it could lead to a peaceful transition and would signal the country has moved into another stage of political development," Barton said. If he hangs on defiantly, it could "essentially stalemate the system," Barton said.

It was not clear just who Pakistan's next leaders would be -- or whether the new Parliament could force Musharraf out.

The parties of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the leader Musharraf ousted, won enough seats to form a new government, though were expected to fall short of the two-thirds needed to impeach the president.

Sharif called for Musharraf to step down. Musharraf's spokesman Rashid Qureshi said, however, that the president intends to work with the new government and will serve out his term, which expires in 2012.

Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, said he would meet soon with Sharif and other opposition leaders "to form a government of national unity."

Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the shake-up in Pakistan's government "could be one of those counterintuitive things where someone who seems less hardline and pro-Western, who is a little less to our liking, may end up doing a better job" in rounding up terrorists. "I wouldn't rule that possibility out at all."

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EDITOR'S NOTE -- Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.