No nuke deal for Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Bush made clear on Saturday that Pakistan should not expect a civilian nuclear agreement like the one with India soon, and he bluntly said the two rivals on the subcontinent cannot be compared to each other.

Bush said he and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, had discussed a civilian nuclear program for Pakistan during talks on Saturday morning.

"I explained that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories," Bush said at a joint news conference with Musharraf on the grounds of the presidential palace.

Before Bush's remarks, administration officials said Musharraf had no chance of making such a deal when proliferation and terrorism remained concerns in Pakistan.

Bush showed strong support for Musharraf's efforts in combating militants, even though Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, are believed to still be hiding in Pakistan. Without being specific, Musharraf made reference to "slippages" in the past.

Bush said, "Part of my mission today was to determine whether or not the president is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice, and he is. He understands the stakes, he understands the responsibility and he understands the need to make sure our strategy is able to defeat the enemy."

The Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, said Musharraf had made a "comprehensive and telling response" to U.S. concerns about Pakistan's commitment to fighting terrorism. He added that

Musharraf shared intelligence and documentary evidence with Bush.

Pakistan had to deal with 30,000 foreign fighters passing through from Afghanistan over the years, Kasuri said, had more troops in the border areas than foreign and Afghan forces together on the other side, and had lost 600 soldiers in fighting in Waziristan. That was more casualties than forces had taken across the border, he said.

Kasuri struggled to answer local journalists who asked if Pakistan had not been left empty-handed after the visit.

Speaking at a news briefing Saturday afternoon to release the joint statement issued by both presidents, he said Musharraf had pressed the case for civil nuclear cooperation, since Pakistan had urgent energy needs, too. "These things take a long time," he said.

Critics of Bush's nuclear agreement with India say it will only encourage other nations to demand similar arrangements. Under the terms of the Indian pact, the United States will end a moratorium of decades on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components, and India will separate its civilian and military nuclear programs and open the civilian facilities to international inspections.

Musharraf is facing rising pressure from opposition parties, including Islamic ones, in large part over his support of U.S. policies to root out militants in Pakistan.

While Bush offered support for Musharraf, the public remarks on both sides could not disguise evident tensions, particularly after the nuclear deal that Bush announced last week with India.

Bush was not expected to endorse a similar nuclear agreement with Pakistan — the country of A.Q. Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program, who confessed to having run an illegal nuclear-proliferation network.

But neither was it expected that Bush would so obviously place Pakistan on a separate footing from India, as Washington has long taken pains to balance U.S. relations between the rivals.

Bush, who said recently in Washington that Pakistan "still has some distance to travel on the road to democracy," made a gentle reference to the need for democratic advances in the country, saying that elections scheduled next year "need to be open and honest."

Musharraf seized power in 1999 in a bloodless coup. He promised to give up his military uniform in 2004, but changed the Constitution so he could hold both his army post and the presidency until 2007.

His opponents in Pakistan charge that the Bush administration has given him wide latitude as it has enlisted Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, while at the same time saying it wants to promote democracy in the Muslim world.

Security was intense for the first visit of a U.S. president in six years, and the first by Bush, who was in essence traveling to bin Laden's back yard two days after a suicide bombing attack in Karachi left four people dead, including a U.S. Embassy employee.

Throughout the day, the streets of Islamabad were peaceful, with the main rally planned for the adjoining city of Rawalpindi curtailed after the political leader Imran Khan was placed under house arrest.

But people in Islamabad showed a lack of excitement over the visit and did not glance at live coverage of the news conference by the two presidents on TV in a shopping mall.

"I do not think the visit will make much difference," said Naser Abbasy, 37, who runs a clothing store here.

His brother, Rashid Mehmud Abbasy, 35, heeding Muslim leaders' call, was wearing a black armband Saturday in protest of Bush's visit. "It is a protest, because of all the atrocities against Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere," he said. "It is not about the president, but his policies."

But Abbasy said the visit was good if it gave Bush a better understanding of the views of Pakistanis.