Elsewhere in this issue we carry an interview President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan has given to American correspondents. It invites attention as much for its brazenness as for its glaring contradictions. The general has called the reported 400 million dollar US aid offer “peanuts”, as if he is not aware that this is only the beginning. Obviously he thinks that the Americans are in panic on account of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan and that this is the time to extract the maximum commitment from them. This is, however, not half as surprising as the rest of his interview. He has asked for a US-Pakistan defence treaty though neither has repudiated the 1954 Mutual Security Pact and the 1969 agreement which commit Washington to come to Islamabad’s rescue in the event of armed aggression against the latter. But he does not want to concede bases to the US in Pakistan because that will “earn the animosity of the Soviet Union”. Nor does he want American forces to fight for Pakistan. Why then does he need a defence treaty with the United States? Surely not for the sake of “moral help” which he says he needs to prove that he has friends. As if this was not enough to confuse his listeners and others, the general has said that military aid to Pakistan would give the US its only influence in the region and help close the backdoor to the whole of the Gulf which, according to him, is now wide open. But how? General Zia does not answer.
This brings us to an article by a respected American commentator, Mr William Safire, which we carry in other columns on this page. He has posed certain pertinent questions to President Carter. What, he asked, will President Carter do if Russian troops move into Pakistan “to clean out the sanctuaries” from which the Afghan insurgents are operating? “Complain again to the United Nations? Send in the 82nd airborne? Precisely what?” Would the US help Pakistan crush a Baluch rebellion. And what if the Russians came to the aid of Baluch rebels? Will the US join only in moral condemnation? Or reply with an air strike? According to Mr Satire Pakistan will accept US military aid which it “may one day need against Indira Gandhi’s India.” It will not take on the Soviet Union. Instead it will “seek its survival by accommodating Soviet interests.” It is not necessary agree with all that he said to see the pertinence of the questions he has raised.