Wikileaks: Saudi Arabia hopes military govern in Pakistan:

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1. Guest8227
   

   King Abdullah and ruling princes distrust Asif Ali Zardari, the country's Shia president, and would prefer 'another Musharraf'. America is often portrayed as the big dog in Pakistan's yard: a swaggering power that makes rules, barks orders and throws its weight around. But the WikiLeaks cables highlight the understated yet insistent influence of another country with ideas about Pakistan's future: Saudi Arabia. n recent years Saudi rulers have played favorites with Pakistani politicians, wielded their massive financial clout to political effect and even advocated a return to military rule. "We in Saudi Arabia are not observers in Pakistan, we are participants," the Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, boasted in 2007. A senior US official later bemoaned as "negative" the Saudi influence. As home to Islam's holiest sites, Saudi Arabia has longstanding ties with Pakistan. In the 1980s Saudi intelligence, along with the CIA, funded the anti-Soviet "jihad" in Afghanistan; since then the Saudis have given billions in financial aid and cut-price oil. But the close relationship has grown "increasingly strained" in the past two years, with King Abdullah and the ruling princes displaying a clear preference for the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, over the president, Asif Ali Zardari, who is viewed with thinly veiled contempt. In January 2009 Abdullah told James Jones, then the US national security adviser, that Zardari was incapable of countering terrorism, describing him as the "'rotten head' that was infecting the whole body". Abdullah added that Pakistan's army was "staying out of Pakistani politics in deference to US wishes, rather than doing what it 'should'". Abdullah's preference for military rule was recorded by the Saudis' American guests: "They appear to be looking for 'another Musharraf': a strong, forceful leader they know they can trust." His views were echoed by the interior minister, who said Saudi Arabia viewed the army as its "winning horse" in Pakistan. The anti-Zardari bias appears to have a sectarian tinge. Pakistan's ambassador to Riyadh, Umar Khan Alisherzai, says the Saudis, who are Sunni, distrust Zardari, a Shia. Last year the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, told Hillary Clinton that Saudi suspicions of Zardari's Shia background were "creating Saudi concern of a Shia triangle in the region between Iran, the Maliki government in Iraq, and Pakistan under Zardari".

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