Khalilzad in trouble over secret contacts with Zardari

NEW YORK - Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born American Ambassador to the United Nations, is in deep trouble over his “unauthorized contacts” with Asif Ali Zardari, Co-Chairman Pakistan People’s Party and a candidate for the post of president of Pakistan, a major US paper reported Tuesday.

In a dispatch from Washington, The New York Times, citing a senior US official, said Khalilzad was facing angry questions from other senior Bush administration officials over his phone calls to Zardari several times a week in the past month until he was confronted.

Other officials said Khalilzad had planned to meet Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacations in Dubai, in a session that was cancelled only after Richard Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Zardari himself that the Ambassador was providing “advice and help.”

“Can I ask what sort of ‘advice and help’ you are providing?” Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Khalilzad, according to The Times.

“What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?” Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department.

The Times said Boucher’s message was provided to it by an administration official who had received a copy.

“Officially, the US has remained neutral in the contest to succeed Mr Musharraf, and there is concern within the State Department that the discussions between Mr Khalilzad and Mr Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, could leave the impression that the US is taking sides in Pakistan’s already chaotic internal politics,” the dispatch said.

“Mr Khalilzad also had a close relationship with Ms Bhutto, flying with her last summer on a private jet to a policy gathering in Aspen, Colorado.”