Top State Department officials responsible for the alliance with Pakistan met leaders of the new government on Tuesday and received what amounted to a public dressing-down from one of them, as well as the first direct indication that the United States relationship with Pakistan would have to change.

On the day the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, was sworn in, Deputy Secretary of State John D Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Richard A Boucher, also met President Pervez Musharraf, whom they had embraced as their partner in the campaign against terrorism but whose power is ebbing.

The leader of the second biggest party in the new Parliament, Nawaz Sharif, said after meeting the two American diplomats that it was unacceptable that Pakistan had become a “killing field.” “If America wants to see itself clean of terrorists, we also want that our villages and towns should not be bombed,” he said. Sharif, a former prime minister, added he was unable to give Negroponte “a commitment” on fighting terrorism.

The statements by Sharif, and the cool body language in the televised portions of his encounter with Negroponte, were just part of the sea change in Pakistan’s politics that is likely to impose new limits on how Washington fights militants within Pakistan’s borders.

That fight, which has recently included American airstrikes in the lawless tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have made sanctuaries, has become widely unpopular, particularly in the last few months as a surge in suicide bombings here has been viewed as retaliation for the American attacks.

... contd.