United States intelligence believes Mush's removal not to help extremists New York , Mar 11: American intelligence now believes that even if Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is removed from power or falls prey to an assassin's bullet it would not lead to rise in power of extremist elements, a media report said today. "If Mr Musharraf were to fall to an assassin's bullet ... It is unlikely that there would be mass uprisings in Lahore and Karachi, or that a religious leader in the Taliban mould would rise to power," the New York Time said quoting American diplomatic and intelligence officials in Washington. "Based on the succession plan, the vice chief of the army, Gen Ahsan Saleem Hyat, would take over as the leader of the army and Mohammedmian Soomro, an ex-banker, would become president," the report said. "General Hyat, who is secular like Mr Musharraf, would hold the real power," it said. "But it is unclear whether General Hyat would be as adept as Mr Musharraf at keeping various interest groups within the military in line." The record of Islamic political parties at the polls over the recent does not suggest any danger of their pulling off an electoral victory, the paper said. For years, it said, notion that Musharraf is all that stands between Washington and a group of nuclear- armed mullahs has dictated just how far the White House feels it can push him to root out al Qaeda and Taliban operatives who enjoy a relatively safe existence in Pakistan. The spectre of Islamic radicals overthrowing Musharraf has also limited the Bush administration's policy options, taking off the table any ideas about American military strikes against a resurgent al Qaeda, which has camps in Pakistani tribal areas, the paper said. The question of how to handle Musharraf, it said, is critical at a time when intelligence officials widely agree that the Taliban is expanding its reach in Pakistan, gradually spreading from remote areas into more settled regions of the country. The fear within Washington that Islamic extremism has become a dominant force in Pakistan, the paper said, has been stoked in part by Musharraf himself. It quotes analysts as saying that his warnings are used to maintain a steady flow of American aid and keep at bay demands from Washington for democratic reforms. "He often invokes the dangers of Islamic radicalism when meeting American officials in Washington and Islamabad, and his narrow escape in two assassination attempts is frequently cited by President Bush as evidence of his tenuous grip on power," the paper noted. While the Islamists would surely take power in any way possible, it said, an examination of polling data and recent election results however suspect in a less than democratic country provides little evidence that Islamists have enough support to take over the country. The last time Pakistan went to the polls in 2002, religious political parties received just 11 percent of the vote, compared with more than 28 percent won by the secular party led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. That election, the paper said, may have even been a high-water mark for the Islamists, who were capitalizing on surging anti-American sentiment after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Even though the Iraq war has also inflamed anti-Western attitudes, these sentiments do not seem to have translated into electoral gains for Islamist parties. Islamist politicians, the report noted, received a drubbing in local elections in 2005, gaining less support than expected in their power base in the tribal areas. In September, a poll by the International Republican Institute, a respected organization affiliated with the Republican Party that helps build democratic institutions in foreign countries, found that just 5.2 per cent of respondents would vote for the main religious party, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, in national parliamentary elections. Although the poll found that this party was the most popular in Baluchistan, the southwestern province where Taliban support is strong, Islamist leaders lagged far behind both Musharraf and Bhutto, as well as another former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. "It is also thought to be unlikely that a successful attempt on Musharraf's life would mean wholesale changes to the power structure of Pakistani politics," it added. "I am not particularly worried about an extremist government coming to power and getting hold of nuclear weapons," the paper quoted Robert Richer, who was associate director of operations in 2004 and 2005 for the Central Intelligence Agency as saying. "If something happened to Musharraf tomorrow, another general would step in." American officials were quoted in the report as saying that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, continues to play a direct role in arming and financing the Taliban's re-emergence in western Pakistan, and there are worries about the relationships between some senior military leaders and Islamist groups. The ties between Islamic militants and Pakistan's security services are decades old, with the two sides working together most closely during the mujahadeen battles against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it said, adding that analysts generally agree, however, that the military remains a largely secular institution that takes seriously its role as protector of Pakistan's identity and would not allow Islamists to become the dominant force in Pakistan. While many in Washington agree that the threat of Islamic militants has become something of a useful foil for Musharraf, the paper said, there is a rift about just how the White House should be treating the Pakistani president. The money and military hardware from the United States is crucial for Pakistan's armed forces to keep pace with archrival India, it noted and added because of this dependency, some officials argue, the Bush administration has powerful leverage to force Musharraf to crack down on extremism. On the other side of the debate, the paper said some State Department officials said that "while Islamic militants probably would not topple Musharraf, why roll the dice?" NewKerala.com 12.3.07