Pakistan-US alliance takes hits on campaign trail

ISLAMABAD (AP) — On the campaign trail in Pakistan, candidates boast about their readiness to stand up to Washington and often tout their anti-American credentials. One party leader even claims he would shoot down U.S. drones if he comes to power.

So it's perhaps no surprise that the government that emerges from next month's parliamentary election is likely to be more nationalistic and protective of Pakistani sovereignty than its predecessor.

As a result, the U.S. may need to work harder to enlist Islamabad's cooperation, and the new Pakistani government might push for greater limits on unpopular American drone strikes targeting Taliban and al-Qaida militants in the country.

But ultimately, the final say on Pakistan's stance toward drones and many aspects of the relationship with Washington is in the hands of the country's powerful army. And even nationalist politicians like former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the leading contender in the election, recognize the need for a U.S. alliance and are unlikely to go too far in disturbing it.

"I think the tagline here is different posturing, same substance" when it comes to the next government's relationship with the U.S, said Moeed Yusuf, an expert on South Asia at the United States Institute of Peace.

Nevertheless, it's unclear how long Pakistan's alliance with the U.S. can remain relatively insulated from anti-American sentiment. The May 11 vote is historic because it will mark the first transfer of power between democratically elected governments in a country that has experienced three military coups.

U.S. officials have remained fairly quiet about the election because they don't want to be seen as influencing who wins. But Secretary of State John Kerry has met Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani twice in the last month, underlining the importance of the relationship to Washington.

The U.S. needs Pakistan's help in battling Islamic militants and negotiating an end to the war in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan relies on the U.S. for billions of dollars in aid and also needs American support as it seeks a bailout from the International Monetary Fund to shore up the government's shaky fiscal situation.

The relationship has been severely strained in recent years, especially following the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden near Pakistan's equivalent of West Point. But it has never broken down completely and has settled into a wary calm over the last year or so. Trust is still in short supply, but both sides recognize they can't do without each other.

"We have moved into a phase of reduced expectations of each other, which is good," said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. "It's what they call the new normal."

This pragmatism seems largely set to continue, despite often pointed comments by Sharif and other candidates on the campaign trail.

Sharif has criticized the outgoing Pakistan People's Party for selling out the country's sovereignty in exchange for U.S. aid and likes to recount how he tested Pakistan's first nuclear weapon in 1998 despite American pressure.

"We will never accept any foreign pressure," said Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N party, during a recent campaign speech. "We will have relations with foreign countries on the basis of mutual respect, dignity and equality."

Sharif's party controlled the government of Pakistan's largest province, Punjab, in 2011 when it turned down more than $100 million in U.S. aid following the raid that killed bin Laden. But Lodhi, the former ambassador, said she thought it was unlikely Sharif would give up the more than $1 billion in American aid Pakistan receives annually if he came to power.

Former cricket star-turned politician Imran Khan, who many analysts believe will end up playing a key role in the opposition after the election, has been even more critical of Pakistan's relationship with the U.S., saying he would "end the system of American slavery."

But the manifesto of Khan's party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, is more tempered, saying "Pakistan will endeavor to have a constructive relationship with the U.S. based on Pakistan's sovereign national interests and international law, not on aid dependency."

Pakistan's relationship with the U.S. — and foreign policy in general — has been less of a focus in the election than domestic issues, such as corruption, pervasive energy shortages and stuttering economic growth.

Lodhi believes this is because the U.S. has said it is largely pulling out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and is seeking a peace settlement with the Taliban — a move long advocated by the Pakistani government and supported by the main contenders in the election.

"That has helped to take the edge off negative sentiment in Pakistan which we saw in the last couple of years against the United States," Lodhi said.

One issue that continues to create tension between the two countries is the U.S. drone program targeting Islamic militants in Pakistan's rugged tribal region near the Afghan border.

The attacks are extremely unpopular in Pakistan. They are seen as violating the country's sovereignty, and many people believe they kill mostly civilians — an allegation denied by the U.S.

Pakistan's civilian and military leaders have contributed to these perceptions by criticizing the strikes in public in the past, while supporting them in secret. This support has declined over time as the relationship between the two countries has worsened.

The number of strikes has dropped from a peak of more than 120 in 2010 to close to a dozen so far this year, but it's unclear how much this trend has been driven by U.S. decisions about targeting versus the political sensitivity of carrying out strikes.

Khan, the former cricketer, has sharply criticized U.S. drone attacks and has even pledged to shoot down the unmanned aircraft if he came to power.

Sharif has also been a vocal opponent of the strikes in the past, although he hasn't made them as much of a focal point of his campaign as Khan has.

Nevertheless, Daniel Markey, a South Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, believes Sharif would work with the army to renegotiate the use of drones in Pakistan if he took power.

"In the end, I think probably some accord will be reached in which the use of drones will probably be curtailed from where they have been over the past couple of years," Markey said during a recent call with media. "But they will continue, particularly against high-value targets when they are found."

However, Lodhi, the former ambassador, has doubts Sharif would pick a high-profile fight with the U.S. over drones since the number of strikes has decreased so much.

"The centrality of drones may not be what it was in the past," Lodhi said. "Why would you want to whip up something that is going down anyway?"

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Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed and Zarar Khan contributed to this report.

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Follow Sebastian Abbot on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sebabbot

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Say again? Some zingers from Venezuelan campaign

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's animated campaign ahead of its April 14 presidential election has seen its share of shake-your-head remarks by both candidates: Interim President Nicolas Maduro of the ruling party, and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. Here's a sampling:

ON CHAVEZ:

Maduro, talking about Chavez's apparition as a "little bird" as Maduro was praying:

"It sang, and I responded with a song and the bird took flight, circled around once and then flew away, and I felt the spirit and blessings of Commander Hugo Chavez for this battle." (Maduro added sounds of wings flapping and bird chirps.)

Capriles' response:

"I believe he ate a little bird, because that's what he's got inside his head."

Maduro:

"Now the bourgeoisie and the right are talking about Maduro's little bird. What do they think? That we're ridiculous? Show some respect, gentlemen."

ON WHY PEOPLE VOTE:

Capriles:

"The act of voting is a rational, and emotional, act."

ON CHAVEZ (II):

Maduro:

"I don't have any doubt that if any man who walked this earth did what was needed so that Christ the redeemer would give him a seat at his side, it was our redeemer liberator of the 21st century, the comandante Hugo Chavez."

ON THE POLLS:

Capriles, on polls showing him trailing:

"I don't think there is any poll that can take a snapshot of what is happening in Venezuela."

ON CONSPIRACY:

Maduro:

"In homage and in honor of our commander there is but one destiny: Victory, the victory of the Venezuelan people against the forces of evil, against the forces of darkness."

ON THE NUMBERS:

Capriles, who lost an October election to Chavez by 8 million to 6.5 million votes, or 55-45 percent:

"For them to get the same amount of votes as the president (Chavez), to me would be fraud. ... I'm not sure anyone would believe it."

ON MY OPPONENT:

Capriles, on Maduro:

"I tell you clearly, Nicolas, I am not going to speak of the times you lied to the country, shamelessly. ...The people have not voted for you, boy."

Maduro, on Capriles:

"He's become crazy. His eyes are popping out of his head. Why are they popping out? Whatever the reason, he's obsessed with me."

ON RELATIONSHIPS:

Capriles, who is single, responding to Maduro's public suggestions that he is gay:

"I'm like a captain of a ship: I have a woman in every port."

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Vatican criticizes campaign against pope

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The honeymoon that Pope Francis has enjoyed since his remarkable election hit a bump Friday, with the Vatican lashing out at what it called a defamatory and "anti-clerical left-wing" media campaign questioning his actions during Argentina's murderous military dictatorship.

On Day 2 of the Francis pontificate, the Vatican denounced news reports in Argentina and beyond resurrecting allegations that the former Jorge Mario Bergoglio failed to openly confront the junta responsible for kidnapping and killing thousands of people in a "dirty war" to eliminate leftist opponents.

Bergoglio, like most Argentines, didn't publicly confront the dictators who ruled from 1976-83, while he was the leader of the country's Jesuits. And human rights activists differ on how much blame he personally deserves.

Top church leaders had endorsed the junta and some priests even worked alongside torturers inside secret prisons. Nobody has produced any evidence suggesting Bergoglio had anything to do with such crimes. But many activists are angry that as archbishop of Buenos Aires for more than a decade, he didn't do more to support investigations into the atrocities.

On Thursday, the old ghosts resurfaced.

A group of 44 former military and police officers on trial for torture, rape and murder in a concentration camp in Cordoba province in the 1970s wore the yellow-and-white ribbons of the papal flag in Francis' honor. Many Argentine newspapers ran the photo Friday.

The Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi noted that Argentine courts had never accused Bergoglio of any crime, that he had denied all accusations against him and that on the contrary "there have been many declarations demonstrating how much Bergoglio did to protect many persons at the time."

He said the accusations against the new pope were made long ago "by anti-clerical left-wing elements to attack the church. They must be firmly rejected."

The harsh denunciation was typical of a Vatican that often reacts defensively when it feels under attack, even though its response served to give the story legs for another day.

It interrupted the generally positive reception Francis has enjoyed since his election as pope on Wednesday, when even his choice of footwear — his old black shoes rather than the typical papal red — was noted as a sign of his simplicity and humility.

There was one clearly unscripted moment Friday, when the 76-year-old Francis stumbled briefly during an audience with the cardinals, but he quickly recovered. And for the second day in a row, Francis slipped out of the Vatican walls, this time to visit an ailing Argentine cardinal, Jorge Mejia, who suffered a heart attack Wednesday and was in the hospital.

This upbeat narrative of a people's pope who named himself after the nature-loving St. Francis of Assisi has clashed with accusations stemming from Bergoglio's past.

The worst allegation is that as the military junta took over in 1976, he withdrew support for two Jesuit priests whose work in the slums of Buenos Aires had put them in direct contact with the leftist guerrilla movement advocating armed revolution. The priests were then kidnapped and interrogated inside a clandestine torture center at the Navy Mechanics School.

Bergoglio said he had told the priests — Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics — to give up their slum work for their own safety, and they refused. Yorio later accused Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work. Yorio died in Uruguay in 2000.

Jalics, who had maintained silence about the events, issued a statement Friday saying he spoke with Bergoglio years later and the two celebrated Mass together and hugged "solemnly."

"I am reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed," he said.

Bergoglio told his official biographer, Sergio Rubin, in 2010, that he had gone to extraordinary, behind-the-scenes lengths to save the men.

The Jesuit leader persuaded the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so Bergoglio could say Mass instead and take the opportunity to successfully appeal for their release, Rubin wrote.

Lombardi said the airing of the accusations following Francis' election was "characterized by a campaign that's often slanderous and defamatory."

Earlier this week, Lombardi issued a similar denunciation of an advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse, accusing it of using the media spotlight on the conclave to try to publicize old accusations against cardinals. The accusations, Lombardi said, are baseless and the cardinals deserve everyone's "esteem."

The accusations against Bergoglio were fanned by Horacio Verbitzky, an investigative journalist who was a leftist militant in the 1970s and is now closely aligned with the government. He has written extensively about the accusations in Argentina's Pagina12 newspaper, a left-wing daily known for advocacy journalism.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting the junta's atrocities, said this week that "Bergoglio was no accomplice of the dictatorship."

"Perhaps he didn't have the courage of other priests, but he never collaborated with the dictatorship," Esquivel said on Buenos Aires' Radio de la Red.

Argentine political analyst Ignacio Fidanza concurred.

"What they're demanding is that during the dictatorship he should have planted himself in the Plaza de Mayo and shouted against it," he told The Associated Press. "It was probably more effective to speak in silence, since it was an extreme situation."

Human rights investigators in Argentina have been unable to make any other cases against Bergoglio from the junta years, other than the allegations concerning the two Jesuits and that he failed to help a family find their murdered daughter's illegally adopted baby.

But activists are also angry that as leader of the Argentine church, he has never acknowledged or apologized for what they describe as the church's active institutional support of the military government, said Gaston Chillier, who tracks the country's human rights cases as director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies.

The church was so deeply in league with the dictators that when the Inter-American Human Rights Commission came for an inspection in 1979, the Argentine navy moved many detainees to an island owned by the diocese during the visit.

"He is responsible during Argentina's period of democracy for continuing a cover-up," Chillier told the AP. "His knowledge of these cases clearly shows that he cannot deny the torture and the systematic theft of babies."

Bergoglio testified in 2010 that he didn't know anything about baby thefts until well after the dictatorship.

Since Bergoglio became archbishop in 1998, his church has issued several apologies for failing to do more to protect people from violence that came from both the right and the left. The latest, in October 2012, was the most forceful, and it also, for the first time, asked Catholics to come forward with whatever evidence they may have to support Argentina's human rights trials.

But Chillier says Bergoglio could have done more to make the church help identify children and the bodies of detainees as well as identify those responsible for atrocities.

"It's one thing to acknowledge what you failed to do, but another entirely to apologize for what you actually did," Chillier said.

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Warren and Almudena Calatrava contributed from Buenos Aires. David Rising in Berlin contributed.

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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