US to send special envoy to confront Musharraf

The Bush administration is dispatching a high-level envoy to Pakistan to tell President Pervez Musharraf...

The Bush administration is dispatching a high-level envoy to Pakistan to tell President Pervez Musharraf that the US will not be satisfied with his plan to hold elections unless he first lifts the emergency law, administration officials said on Monday.

While welcoming the news that Musharraf would hold elections in January rather than delay them, they questioned whether elections could be legitimate if held when the country remains effectively under martial law, with Opposition parties in lockdown and unable to campaign or assemble freely.

“The President thinks we need to lift the emergency rule in order to have free and fair elections,” said Dana Perino, the White House spokesperson. A senior administration official said that it remains an open question whether free elections can be held that reflect the true wishes of the Pakistani people if Musharraf continues to jail or otherwise detain the Opposition.

The comments reflected increased frustration within the administration over Musharraf’s power grab, as well as mounting uneasiness about how much longer Pakistan can continue in the present chaos before descending into further instability. The plan to send an envoy to Pakistan was described by administration officials, who declined to elaborate further about the mission.

Publicly, Bush administration officials say that they continue to support Musharraf, who is still viewed by the Pentagon as America’s best option for tackling operatives of al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s frontier provinces. “Nobody is ready to cut him off at the knees yet,” one official said.

But the official said that many people within the administration were worried that Musharraf’s missteps would soon so erode his base at home that he could be forced to relinquish power.