By Guardian Unlimited / World news 04:15pm
President Bush might have taken pains to describe (registration required) the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan as "personal friends of mine" while hosting them at the White House yesterday, but it's unlikely they use such warm words for each other, writes Peter Walker.
In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Hamid Karzai insisted Pervez Musharraf knew perfectly well the location of the former head of the Taliban regime, but would not arrest him.
Mullah Omar is, for sure, in Quetta, Pakistan, and he knows that. We have given him the GPS numbers of his house and the telephone number.
Gen Musharraf denies that, and is doing so while combining international statesmanship with a seemingly endless round of media engagements. His most entertaining was an appearance on satirical new programme The Daily Show, where host Jon Stewart elaborately poured his guest a cup of tea before asking casually: "Where's Osama bin Laden?"
Such media outings have left some uncomfortable, for example this post on the All Things Pakistan blog:
Many of Musharraf's interviews (60 minutes, Today Show) and the much-quoted contents of his book have been self-serving and in many cases outright embarrassing. Disclosing [former US deputy secretary of state] Armitage's bombing threat; boasting that Pakistan has won large amounts of "prize money" by capturing terrorists as if it was a "country for hire"; and the claim of success for the Kargil conflict has helped him sell books, but has made Pakistan look like a banana republic.
But the Pakistani newspaper The News decided that, on balance, it was a good thing for US audiences to "be able to see a slice of life in contemporary Pakistan".
Though this may be through the eyes of a military man who overthrew an elected government, at least Pakistan is not in the news these days for honour killings or sectarian attacks. It would be fair to say that General Musharraf has at least won the PR war during his US visit, if nothing else.
But relations with Mr Karzai are another matter. Amateur psychologists noted keenly that the Pakistani president and his Afghan counterpart did not even shake hands with each other as they stood either side of Mr Bush at a press conference.
"You know," Mr Bush himself said before the trio retired to a meal of spicy sea bass and salad, "it'll be interesting for me to watch the body language of these two leaders to determine how tense things are."
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