It is eventually the Divine Hand that writes the script. All was set for Mian Nawaz Sharif, the Prime of Pakistan, to go for an ‘epoch-making’ tour of the United States via his favourite stopover-London. There was a great deal of talk about MNS winning Obama’s admiring nod because of his recent moves to ‘liberalize’ Pakistan. A meeting with ‘much-favoured’ Modi was also to take place in which MNS was expecting to achieve a real breakthrough in Indo-Pak relations. There were also some apprehensions here in Pakistan that President Obama would pressurize MNS into yielding some ground on the ‘nuclear issue’. It is a well-known fact that President Obama (like every outgoing predecessor of his) has a burning desire to leave behind a legacy of visible achievements. He has already an ‘Iranian’ breakthrough in his bag. He will love to cap it with some success in forcing Pakistan to win ‘India’s trust’ and to reverse its stress on ‘tactical nuclear weapons’.
But as I have said it is eventually the Divine Will that prevails. MNS has been forced to embrace the unthinkable option of calling off his U.S tour. And ironically the man to replace him (for Pakistan’s representation) in the Nuclear Security Summit is a guy called Tariq Fatmi!
Meaning no insult to the ex-diplomat of modest standing, I want to point out here the dearth of appropriate human capital at the disposal of MNS. He had no one else to think of!
The speech that MNS delivered on the night of the 28th to re-iterate his ‘tearful’ resolve to root out terrorism from the country, turned out to be an exercise on his part to ‘assert’ that he still had Prime Ministerial authority. Let us believe he has!
Who has seen tomorrow?
