Musharraf Ties Pose Dilemma For Bush

Green added that "the difficulty was, you never knew how much [of what] Musharraf said he would do would get translated into action by" his military and intelligence services.

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Another former Bush NSC staff member, Xenia Dormandy, said the need to restore democracy in Pakistan was a regular talking point in meetings between Bush and Musharraf, but it was clear that that issue took a back seat to concerns about fighting al-Qaeda and nonproliferation. Still, she said, officials believed Musharraf was sincere in his repeated assurances that he intended to bring back full democracy.

"We certainly felt that Musharraf was still doing good things for the country," Dormandy said. "He was not as democratic as we like, and we always pushed him, but his objective was to move the country in a different direction."

A key source of tension in recent years has not been Pakistani democracy but concern within the U.S. government that Musharraf has been increasingly unwilling or unable to control the renaissance of Islamic extremists in the lightly governed regions along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The issue came to a head in the fall last year after Musharraf stunned U.S. officials by signing a peace deal with Islamic militants along the border, a move that infuriated Afghan officials who saw Pakistan providing a haven to Taliban insurgents staging attacks against the Kabul government.

One of the tensest meetings between Bush and Musharraf came during a three-way summit at the White House in September last year, when Bush tried to broker a truce between the Pakistani president and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai. Bush tried to play the role of neutral arbiter, according to one person familiar with the meeting, who said there was considerable awkwardness when Karzai complained about Pakistan turning a blind eye to the Islamic extremists.

A number of people involved in Pakistan policy over the years say they remain uncertain how strong Bush has been in delivering a truly tough message to Musharraf about the need to rein in extremists or to restore democracy. Administration officials say Musharraf has little question where Bush stands on key issues, though they do acknowledge that the "tough" talk is often delivered by the president's subordinates.

Dormandy lamented what she described as years of ambiguous messages from the United States to Musharraf. "If we truly expected Musharraf not to call a state of emergency, if we truly expected Musharraf to be strongly urged to pursue democratic objectives, then we would have been more clear about how important it was to us," she said. "We left him the impression that if he moved on other priorities, he would probably be okay."