posted January 07, 2008 12:08 AM            

quote:

---

WASHINGTON: Pakistan, now widely considered the world’s most dangerous country, has come squarely in the US cross-hairs with US presidential candidates vying with each other to pull the trigger even as the Bush administration itself is tightening the screws.

Saturday’s night Democratic debate in New Hampshire saw presidential aspirants jump on Bush administration’s Pakistan policy, with each one of them claiming better insight and expertise in handling the fast-deteriorating country.

But it was former first lady Hillary Clinton who threw a bombshell during the debate by proposing a joint US-British team to oversee the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal if she is elected president.

“So far as we know right now, the nuclear technology is considered secure, but there isn’t any guarantee, especially given the political turmoil going on inside Pakistan,” Clinton said during a Democratic debate here. If elected president, she said, “I would try to get Musharraf to share the security responsibility of the nuclear weapons with a delegation from the United States and, perhaps, Great Britain.”

The proposal is certain to stir up Islamabad, which is hypersensitive to any such suggestion of foreign control or oversight of its what it regards as its crown jewels - acquired mostly through theft and smuggling - central to its existence as a country.

Clinton’s comments also signaled the growing hardline approach to Pakistan across the American political spectrum, in part because of presidential election politics. Candidates are now jostling each other to show they have a better handle than the other on the world’s hotspots.

Most presidential candidates now speak of launching unilateral military strikes or hot pursuit across Afghan border into Pakistan to hit Al-Qaida.

Some, like Barack Obama have said so openly, while others, like Republican John McCain have chastised him for talking about it but nevertheless suggested they too would follow the same policy.

“Here’s an unstable leader, Musharraf, in a country with a serious radical - violently radical element that could, under some circumstances, take over the government,” Democratic candidate John Edwards said during Saturday’s debate.

“If they did, they would have control of a nuclear weapon. They could either use it, or they could turn it over to a terrorist organization to be used against America or some of our allies.”

Another candidate, Bill Richardson, a former Secretary of Energy who oversaw nuclear issues s described Pakistan as “a potentially failed nation-state with nuclear weapons.”

“We had a situation where Musharraf has not gone after Al-Qaida in his own country, despite the fact that we’ve given him $11 billion... He’s basically said that he is the supreme dictator,” Richardson fumed. “What I would specifically do as president is I would ask Musharraf to step aside.” Hillary Clinton too had signaled that she has had it with Musharraf, but more than any other candidate or the administration, she has gone farthest in public getting oversight of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Latest polls in New Hampshire show that Hillary Clinton is either tied or trailing Barack Obama in Tuesday’s primary election.

---