Pakistan Hopes Premier's U.S. Visit Will Yield Funds, Forbearance

New Government Is Considered Likely To Succeed, in Part

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani has a clear agenda for his inaugural visit to Washington this week: He wants more aid, more patience and less pressure from the United States as his four-month-old coalition government develops a strategy to combat Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in the tribal areas along his country's border with Afghanistan.

But while Gillani may leave town with more money -- targeted toward education, development and assistance to cope with skyrocketing food and fuel prices -- U.S. patience is likely to be in short supply, with the Bush administration publicly chastising the new Pakistani leadership for its reluctance to move aggressively against terrorist redoubts inside its territory.

"Pakistan is a friend; Pakistan is an ally," President Bush said this month, but the rise in cross-border infiltration "ought to be troubling" to its government.

Other officials were more blunt: "We need Pakistan to put more pressure on that border," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen said last week, while on Friday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice echoed that Pakistan "need[s] to do more."

Congress, in rare bipartisan accord on foreign policy, has grown increasingly outspoken against Pakistan's preference for negotiating with tribal leaders. Current legislative proposals make any new U.S. counterterrorism aid -- the bulk of more than $10 billion Washington has provided Pakistan since 2001 -- conditional on demonstrated results.

"I'm not sure they're ready for what they're walking into," one U.S. official said in anticipation of a testy reception for Gillani from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Pakistani officials say they understand that the seven-year-old Afghan war is not going well for U.S. and NATO forces. But far from accepting blame for the worsening situation, the new government harbors its own suspicions about Washington's impatience. Some question whether the Bush administration was simply more comfortable dealing with Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan single-handedly for more than a decade, than it is with the admittedly messy democratic government that replaced him.

"The tendency in Washington is always to think about foreign rulers as 'ours' and 'not ours,' " said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador here. "Then, when one of 'ours' is weakened, people in D.C. tend to think, 'Oh, God, there goes our policy.' "

Reports that the United States and NATO are considering the deployment of ground forces across the border from Afghanistan to raid terrorist camps in Pakistan -- an effort denied by Western military leaders -- have increased tension on both sides. "If you keep saying, 'Let's do it together -- but if you won't, then we'll do it alone,' then what you're doing is undermining the spirit of working together to begin with," Haqqani said.

Daniel Markey, a Pakistan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said: "We need to be very sensitive to the fact that Pakistan doesn't see the world exactly the same way we do. They don't see the threats the same way that we do."

Pakistan's worldview includes an ongoing threat from India, against which it has armed itself with nuclear weapons and a large conventional military force. Afghanistan, with close Indian ties, is seen more as an adversary than an ally. The Taliban, whose fighters are drawn from the Pashtun ethnic group that spans the Afghan-Pakistani border, came to life in the 1990s as an ally in keeping Pakistan's neighbors at bay.

Peace with the tribal leaders along the frontier -- where terrorist groups maintain headquarters and training facilities out of reach of U.S. and NATO forces -- has been kept by Islamabad for decades with a hands-off policy under which the tribes govern themselves. And while Musharraf may have been willing to bend those realities in exchange for massive aid and pressure from the United States, the new Pakistani leaders say they must tread more carefully. A misstep could lead to a collapse of the coalition or even a military coup.