Pak reacts strongly to use of harsh adjectives against Aziz

Islamabad, May 21 (UNI) Pakistan was bitter in its reaction to the harsh adjectives used for Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in a biography of the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Dawn had earlier reported that Mr Aziz was mentioned in rather uncharitable terms in Ms Rice's biography according to which when he tried to ''charm'' her on her first trip to Pakistan in 2005, she ''stared him down''.

''I will describe it as a trash, which does not deserve any comments,'' Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told a press briefing in Islamabad.

The book titled 'Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power' is written by Newsweek Chief of Correspondents and Senior Editor Marcus Mabry. It was recently launched in the United States.

Referring to Ms Rice's first trip to South Asia in March 2005 during which she also visited Pakistan, the author writes, ''Yet, when Rice sat down with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who fancied himself as a ladies' man, Aziz puffed himself up and held forth in what he obviously thought was his seductive baritone.

''(He tried) this Savile Row-suited gigolo kind of charm, staring in (Rice's) eyes.'' ''There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charms on her as a woman, and she just basically stared him down. By the end of the meeting, he was babbling.'' The author quoting a participant at the meeting wrote, the Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably. And his voice visibly changed.

Some of the foreign men, they don't get it. She has a really strong will, and I think people sometimes 'misunderestimate' her.'' There are also references to President General Pervez Musharraf in the book and how Ms Rice on her first trip to the region had serious items on her agenda, including ''Pakistan's weak efforts to root out the Taliban and Al Qaeda''.

''Then there were perpetual Pakistan-India tensions with Pakistan being a nuclear power that faced its own radical Islamists, as well as having its own 'freedom deficit', General Pervez Musharraf having come to power in a coup before being elected in widely boycotted elections.'' The author also mentions that the Secretary of State had telephoned President Musharraf to explain that Washington was signing a new nuclear pact with India, the newspaper added.

''The deal with Delhi, like Washington's limited moves to stop the killing in Darfur, was a profoundly realist accommodation to the world as it was (the reality of a nuclear India) rather than as it should be (the ideal of non-proliferation),'' notes the author.

UNI