These 'deep thinkers' are not 'surrounding' Musharaff - they are in fact his greatest political enemies. There is a lot of support for recognition of Israel here in Pakistan. Poll after poll shows that it's something like 50-50 for and against relations with Israel - and even those against are not passionately opposed. This is remarkable considering the poisonous propaganda against Israel spread by the religious extremists. Only the religious fanatics oppose Israel here, and they are a tiny minority...very voical but only a minority.

The Israel-Arab dispute has nothing whatsoever to do with Pakistan, and I fail to see why we don't have diplomatic relations with Israel. Israel is a small but important country and it is in our interest for us to develop good relations with it as quickly as possible. It is ABSOLUTELY INSANE to allow the Arabs to dictate our foriegn policy on such an important issue.

Thank you for the info. Reading mainstream press accounts, one would never get the impression that support is that strong. Do the Islamists have political strnegth beyond their numbers? One often hears of some of the Generals surrounding Musharraf as being fairly fanatical in that regard.

Islamists in Pakistan make a hell of a lot of noise, but they have no solid, permanent power base in the country. Traditionally, Pakistanis vote on tribal/clan lines and this has meant that until the last election all religious parties combined have never won more than 2% of the vote.

In the last election an alliance of MANY religious parties won around 10% of the vote. This was a shock indeed to many Pakistanis, and to Westerners too. But you have to see this success in its proper context. The Islamists succes came in two frontier provinces bordering Afghanistan where people were angry that Afghans were being made to pay the price for the 911 atrocity commited by Arabs. Even more importantly, Pakistan's two biggest political parties had severe restrictions placed on them by the goverment. This created a political vaccum that the Islamists were able to (partly) fill.

Regarding Pak generals, The Pakistan army is the most pro-Western and secular instituion in the country and has wanted diplomatic relations with Israel for a very long time. Out of many dozens of Generals there were only two with Islamist leanings and they were promptly sent packing after Musharraf came to power.

But I'm not surprised that you have these notions about Pakistan, because certain sections of the Western, particularily American, media seem to have launched a campaign to malign Pakistan. These people tend to belong to two 'camps' both with their own agenda.

The right-wingers, who tend to be staunchly pro-Israel, were angry with Pakistan because it refuses to recognise Israel, a country with which it has no dispute, which has never done anything to harm it and which has been extending the hand of friendship to Pakistan for the last half a century. Their criticism became even more virulent after Pakistan became a nuclear power and hence came to been seen as a bigger threat to Israel.

The other camp is the anti-war and anti-Bush left-wing. In an attempt to undermine Bush they wanted to portray him as a hypocrite for attacking Iraq while befriending Pakistan (amongst others). So they had to create and build up a Pakistani bogeyman to ridiculous levels, out of all proportion and so removed from reality that it made you think these guys just had to be acid when writing these articles.

I'm sorry to say that the present 'road map to peace' is a road to nowhere and the Arabs are on an irreversible path of confrontation with America and Israel. We have to distance ourselves completely from the Arab's futile and ultimately self-destructive confronation with a superpower. And we do this by establishing full and friendly diplomatic relations with Israel which will be mutually very benficial for both countries and will also place Pakistan's friendship with America on a sounder footing. Let the Arabs fight their own wars.