Word: zardari
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...What They're Watching in Pakistan: Footage of the Sept. 24 meeting between President Asif Ali Zardari and U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (in which Zardari called Palin "gorgeous" and said he'd like to hug her) has been must-see TV on local networks and has drawn tens of thousands of viewers on YouTube. While some laughed off Zardari's behavior--one station ran the clip with a romantic Urdu ballad sound track--many called it unbecoming of a head of state. One mosque leader issued a fatwa against him, calling his gushing un-Islamic...
...pressure. The changes came just weeks after Richard Boucher, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, publicly demanded that reform of the ISI be carried out. They also followed last weekend's secret meeting between Pakistan's recently elected President, Asif Ali Zardari, and CIA head Michael Hayden about what the U.S. intelligence agency called the "double game played by Pakistan's spy agency." While in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, Zardari told Roger Cohen of the New York Times, "The ISI will be handled; that is our problem...
...There's nothing inherently incorrect about that answer: Zardari, whose wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by al-Qaeda, isn't in league with Osama bin Laden, and the vast majority of Pakistanis oppose terrorism. The trouble is that the same could be said of nearly every country in the world. But anyone who has picked up a newspaper in the past few months knows that Pakistan is now home to al-Qaeda's top leaders and serves as the staging ground for the dramatic increase in suicide bombings in Afghanistan - and that elements of its security services are indisputably aiding...
...believe that new President [Asif Ali] Zardari has that mission at all. But no, the Pakistani people also, they want freedom. They want democratic values to be allowed in their country, also. They understand the dangers of terrorists having a stronghold in regions of their country, also. And I believe that they, too, want to rid not only their country, but the world, of violent Islamic terrorists...
...Mabry's account of the Rice-Aziz encounter spawned a minor media storm in Pakistan, but like it, the furor over the Zardari-Palin meeting will likely soon be forgotten. With an economy in free fall and militancy on the rise, Pakistanis have little time to concern themselves for too long over how their President comports himself...