Khalilzad and Zardari

Washington, Aug. 26: Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the UN, is facing angry questions from other senior Bush administration officials over what they describe as unauthorised contacts with Asif Ali Zardari, a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as President of Pakistan.

Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Zardari, the co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorised contacts, a senior US official said.

Others said Khalilzad had planned to meet Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was cancelled only after Richard A. 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 email message to Khalilzad. “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 message was provided to The New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.

Officially, the US has remained neutral in the contest to succeed Musharraf, and there is concern within the state department that the discussions between Khalilzad and 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.

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

The conduct by Khalilzad, who is Afghan by birth, has also raised hackles because of speculation that he might seek to succeed Hamid Karzai as President of Afghanistan. Khalilzad, who was the Bush administration’s first ambassador to Afghanistan, has also kept in close contact with Afghan officials.