THE rift between Pakistan and Britain has widened after Asif Ali Zardari and David Cameron offered starkly differing assessments of the war in Afghanistan.
The President of Pakistan flew into London yesterday having claimed that the international community was losing the war against the Taliban and had “lost the battle for hearts and minds”.
In a barely coded rebuke to Mr Cameron over the British Prime Minister’s decision to set a timetable for the withdrawal of combat troops, Mr Zardari said the insurgents had “time on their side”.
Mr Cameron rejected that assessment and defended his criticism of Pakistan’s authorities for “looking both ways” on terror.
Senior Whitehall officials played down Mr Zardari’s interview in Le Monde, suggesting it was intended to appease domestic critics. Pakistani demands that he cancel the visit to Britain, first voiced after Mr Cameron’s criticism in India last week, grew louder amid the floods in the northwest of the country and riots in Karachi in which more than 37 people were killed.
Anger has been further inflamed by allegations that the main objective of his visit to Britain is to launch the political career of his son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, 21, who recently graduated from Oxford University. Mr Zardari and his son are expected to address a rally of 3000 supporters in Birmingham on Saturday.
In Le Monde, Mr Zardari defended his decision to go ahead with his formal meeting with Mr Cameron at Chequers tomorrow.
“A frank discussion will enable us to rediscover a bit of serenity,” he said. But the President had some tart words for the British Prime Minister, whom he said he would tell “to his face that (it) is my country that is paying the highest price in human life for this war (on terrorism)”.
Mr Zardari warned that the coalition was “losing the war against the Taliban. Above all, this is because we have lost the battle to win the hearts and minds.
“To win the support of the Afghan population, we have to bring it economic development and show that we can not only change its life, but improve it.”
He said that time was on the side of the insurgents. “The whole approach seems wrong to me. The population does not associate the coalition with a better future.”
In reply, Mr Cameron said British troops were enabling Afghans in central Helmand to go about their normal lives.
“We’re protecting a large percentage of the population, keeping them free from terror and, in the areas that we are in, you now see markets functioning and schools open . . . and life is actually able to go on. So I don’t accept that we’re losing the battle of hearts and minds,” he told the BBC. Mr Cameron added: “People have strong views but I also have a strong view that terrorism is wrong and there are terrorist groups in Pakistan that threaten British lives and have been responsible for terrorist atrocities and we have to close down those groups.”
Concerns at the cost and purpose of Mr Zardari’s European visit will not have been allayed by pictures showing the Pakistani leader taking off in a helicopter from the 16th-century Chateau de la Reine, near Rouen in Normandy, which is owned by his family.
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