Wikileaks: Zardari and Gilani.

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   Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari fears he will be bumped off by the country's military, which continues to call the shots behind the civilian facade. Mealy-mouthed Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani supports US drone strikes in private but says he will oppose it in public. Washington worries that no amount of aid will wean Pakistan away from using terrorism as a state policy to overcome its structural weakness which it is unwilling to address. Islamabad declined an offer by India to talk about its work in Afghanistan despite complaining to the world about New Delhi's role. All it took was one phone call from the Washington to ensure Pakistan did not oppose the US-India nuclear deal at a crucial stage. Tuesday's wikileaks cable dump centering around US ties with Pakistan and containing the above vignettes shows a relationship based on deceit and double-talk , underscored by a Islamabad's deep-seated neurosis of India which shows no signs of subsiding despite its crippling internal crisis and Washington's effort to walk and talk it out of a self-destructive mode. Many of the cables show a fractured leadership deeply suspicious of each other. Zardari , for instance, is so fearful of assassination, that once cable relates him as telling US ambassador Anne Patterson that "he had instructed his son Bilawal to name his sister, Faryal Talpur, as president" if he is killed. Separately, army chief Kayani tells the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he "might however reluctantly" pressure Zardari to resign and replace him with Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National Party — and not Zardari's arch foe Nawaz Sharif. He distrusts Sharif more than he dislikes Zardari. Another cable suggests PM Gilani is a reluctant underling to Zardari.

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