Word: islamabad
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...being stingy; it was acting out of vital concern for the fate of Pakistan. Seeking to reassure Zia that more support would be forthcoming, Washington pressed forward with quiet negotiations with its Western allies, some friendly OPEC nations and China to establish an informal "consortium" that would supply the Islamabad government with additional military and economic assistance...
Relations between the two nations could hardly have been worse. A mob of fanatical Muslims had attacked the U.S. embassy in Islamabad last November; by the time the siege was lifted, seven hours later, two Americans were dead. The U.S., meanwhile, had consistently obstructed Pakistani efforts to build a uranium-enrichment plant-which would give the country a nuclear weapons capability -had cut off economic and military aid, and had criticized the execution last April of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Such actions, complained the government-owned Pakistan Times, "amounted almost to interference in our internal affairs." Said...
Washington's worries are shared by the Pakistan government, which nonetheless prepared to accept the offers of American help with something less than full enthusiasm. A grim editorial in the Pakistan Times charged the U.S. with having adopted a "hostile tone" toward Islamabad and being blind to "the danger posed to Pakistan" by the original Marxist coup in Afghanistan in 1978. It was, said the editorial, "amazing that the event was lost on Washington and London." But in a certain teeth-gritting spirit, the editorial concluded: "Pakistan must accept the offer of military aid from the United States...
...rigged up to a perverse double standard. Let only a rumor waft through, a propagandist's mischievous fantasy about the CIA's organizing the attack on the Sacred Mosque at Mecca, and rioters swarm like film extras against U.S. consulates from Turkey to India; in Islamabad, Pakistan, two Americans die and the embassy goes up in flames. Let the U.S. admit the deposed Shah for temporary medical treatment, and the Tehran embassy, with all occupants, becomes the property of overheated Shi'ite gunmen. But let four Soviet divisions move in to take possession of another country...
With Khomeini's encouragement, Muslims ?not all of them Shi'ites?have staged anti-American riots in Libya, India and Bangladesh. In Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, a mob burned the U.S. embassy and killed two U.S. servicemen; the Ayatullah's reaction was "great joy." In Saudi Arabia, possessor of the world's largest oil reserves, the vulnerability of the royal family was made starkly apparent when a band of 200 to 300 well-armed raiders in November seized the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the holiest of all Islamic shrines, which is under the protection of King Khalid...