US urges Pakistan leaders to explore political deal

WASHINGTON, Aug 16 (Reuters) The United States has urged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose popularity has eroded since his failed effort to remove the country's chief justice, to explore some kind of political arrangement with opposition politicians, a US official said today.

''There are elections coming up in Pakistan and there is a moderate center in Pakistani politics and that moderate center has an interest in seeing the political and social reforms that Musharraf put in place continue,'' said the official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The official was commenting on a New York Times report that the Bush administration is quietly encouraging Musharraf to share power with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, citing citing US and Pakistani officials.

In Islamabad, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, having met the Pakistani leadership during a two-day visit to Islamabad, declined to respond when asked if the United States was mediating between Musharraf and Bhutto.

He said the Pakistani people should chose their next government in elections and he had been encouraging political leaders to help ensure the vote is fair.

''I've also encouraged them to look at what can be done to strengthen the moderate center of Pakistani politics,'' Boucher told reporters. ''The body politic here, by and large, wants to modernize the nation ... wants to have a safe society.

''The more that those tendencies can be brought forward and joined, the more solid base there is to deal with the serious problem of extremism.'' The US official who spoke on condition of anonymity declined to say whether the Bush administration was encouraging a Bhutto-Musharraf deal but also made clear that it wanted to see ''moderate'' forces in Pakistan strengthened.

Asked if the United States risked appearing to prop up a military ruler who seized power in a bloodless 1999 coup but is regarded as a vital ally by the Bush administration, the official said any deal was up to the Pakistanis to work out.

''These are political arrangements that are going to either happen or not happen based on the interests and desires of the Pakistani parties,'' he said. ''We can encourage parties to look at where there are overlapping interests. Any decisions are going to be made by the (Pakistani) parties involved.'' In a sign of US concern, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is likely to visit Pakistan in September, which would be his second trip to the country in four months, the US official said.

The high-level attention reflects US worries that Musharraf has not done enough to combat Taliban militants on his side of the largely lawless border with Afghanistan and, more recently, concerns about his political standing.

The New York Times said U.S. officials believe an alliance with Bhutto could give Musharraf his best chance of defusing the domestic crisis and remaining as president, citing officials who asked not be identified.

US and Pakistani officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the idea of a power-sharing arrangement when she called Musharraf last week to warn him not to declare emergency powers, the newspaper reported.

The report also said Bhutto had been holding talks in recent weeks with senior Bush administration officials, including U.N.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment on whether Khalilzad had met Bhutto but he stressed that the Bush administration had talked to ''all parties.'' REUTERS RL PM2125