US media sees Zardari as weak and uncertain leader

Washington, Apr.12 (ANI): Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari may have some how managed to stick to his post during the recent political chaos in the country, but the US media sees him as a weak and uncertain leader.

According to a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, Matthew Kaminski, Zardari seems to be reluctant to declare an all out war against the extremists in the tribal region of the country, who have created havoc across the region.

"He is politically weak, and sounds disinclined to push the military to wage war against the Pashtun tribes in the mountains," Dawn reported Kaminski, as writing.

According to a senior Washington Post writer David Ignatius, Zardari give an impression of an accidental President.

"On some major security and intelligence issues, he claimed no knowledge or sought to shift blame to others, and the overall impression was of an accidental president who still has an uncertain grasp on power," Ignatius viewed.

He pointed out that the gap between the Pakistani officials' comments in public and their acceptance in private was a major problem.

"Pakistani leaders know the Predator attacks help combat the Taliban in remote Waziristan, but they don't want to seem like American lackeys. So they protest in public the very strategy they have privately endorsed," Ignatius said.

Joe Klein of the Time magazine, who also interviewed Zardari along with Kaminski and Ignatius recently, termed Zardari's regime as 'fragile' and said that the Pak presidency was unwilling to admit the extent of the problem confronting the country.

In the interview, Zardari had squarely blamed the eight year long US led war in Afghanistan for Pakistan's prevailing condition.

"They (Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar) were pushed into Pakistan by your great military offensive in Afghanistan. For eight years nothing has happened and now we are weak and you are unable to do anything about it, in eight years you haven't been able to eliminate the cancer," Zardari had said.

The journalists, however, agreed that Zardari has a clear point of view regarding threat perception emanating from the western borders along Afghanistan, but he is unwilling to allow US military onto Pakistani soil. (ANI)