Consistency with Pakistan urged Ex-Bowdoin chief: U.S. must tread lightly

BANGOR – The Bush administration would be wise to distance itself from the United States’ historically intermittent relationship with Pakistan and develop lasting but distant ties with the Muslim nation, former Bowdoin College President Robert Edwards told a group of students and community leaders Tuesday.

“We understand that we are now in Pakistan’s affairs deeply financially, militarily and morally,” Edwards, now a board member of the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, told a gathering of about 50 people at the G. Clifton Eames Learning Center in Bangor.

Edwards, who in the late 1980s served as an adviser to the Aga Khan, a religious and political leader with millions of Muslim followers throughout the Middle East, made the remarks as part of the Bangor Savings Bank inaugural community affairs lecture series.

Shortly before he stepped down from Bowdoin this year after 11 years at the helm, Edwards, 66, rejoined the Pakistani university’s board of trustees.

On Tuesday, he urged the United States to end its “foul weather” relationship with Pakistan, on which it has intermittently imposed sanctions and offered aid over the nation’s 45-year existence.

“If we’ve learned anything in the last few months it is that this on-again, off-again relationship can incur costs we do not anticipate,” Edwards said.

Just as the United States should forge stable relations with Pakistan, Edwards said it was essential that America not remove itself completely from efforts to build a post-Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan. But the West should tread lightly on the process, Edwards said, to help ensure stability in the historically volatile region.

“We cannot control this,” Edwards said, concurring with the Bush administration’s limited role in negotiations to rebuild Afghanistan’s government with the crumbling of the Taliban regime. “What we impose would be temporary because it wouldn’t be based on the extraordinarily complex situation on the ground.”

For America, much of that complexity stems from a past reluctance to understand the pervasiveness of the Muslim faith in the region, which unlike Western countries is founded in religion and divided into nations, he said.

With a new-found and somewhat unexpected ally in Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Edwards said America is poised to help the nation of 140 million people become a modern player in international politics without forsaking its Muslim ties.

While the Bush administration has already relaxed the U.S. sanctions on the fledgling nuclear power, the United States could do more to stabilize the nation, Edwards said.

Key to bringing an end to strife in Pakistan, he said, is helping to end the country’s long battle with India over the disputed Kashmir region.

Edwards said that the United States should also look to bolster the faltering Pakistani economy as a means of shoring up relations with the poor but pivotal nation.

“We should not take away with one hand that we give with another,” Edwards said referring to a two-thirds drop in U.S. orders of Pakistani-made textiles since the terrorist attacks.

“That’s an area where some sort of government assurances could be valuable.”