Word: zia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Gorbachev also shook the big stick. During a meeting with Pakistan's President Zia ul-Haq, in Moscow for the funeral, the General Secretary issued a thinly veiled warning that the U.S.S.R. might actively foment trouble inside Pakistan if its government continues to cooperate with the U.S. in supporting the insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan. Reporting on the meeting, the Soviet news agency TASS said that "aggressive actions" against Afghanistan "cannot but affect in the most negative way Soviet-Pakistani relations...
Pakistan's national elections last week were in effect a tug-of-war between President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977, and the alliance of eleven opposition parties known as the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. Zia exhorted his countrymen to vote, thereby demonstrating their support of his government; the opposition parties called for an election boycott, in the hope that this would lead Zia and the other generals back to their barracks. The result was a standoff. Rejecting the opposition's call for a boycott, almost 53% of the country's 35 million eligible voters...
...most important questions facing the country now is whether Zia, 60, is really prepared to share power with the newly elected legislators. He dissolved the National Assembly when he seized power from the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977, and has since ruled by martial law. Zia insists that the elections will lead to a restoration of civilian rule, possibly "within a few months." Toward this end he had gone to enormous effort to ensure a good turnout. His government declared it a crime for anyone to call for an election boycott, and the President said that "to cast...
When the results were in, Zia pronounced the balloting a huge success. He admitted surprise at the defeat of some of the "sure winners," but the opposition threat, he said, "has turned out to be a spent bullet." Western diplomats tended to agree that the opposition parties had made a mistake by staying out of the campaign, thereby losing ground to newcomers. The winning candidates, all of whom ran as independents, were on the whole younger than in the past; less than 25% had previously been identified with any political party. Across the board, Islamic fundamentalists were defeated in favor...
...modest man, Zia has proved to be shrewd in his dealings with his military colleagues and with the general public. Partly because of strong support from the U.S. and other Western countries, Pakistan's economy is strong, growing at a rate of 6% a year, and the country expects to profit from a bumper crop of cotton. Zia has set as his goal the creation of an "Islamic democracy," but his vision of Islamization is far more restrained than the one being practiced by the mullahs in neighboring Iran. Zia has remained on correct terms with both Iran and Iraq...