Musharraf linked Benazir's security to her ties with him, reveals book

ISLAMABAD — President Pervez Musharraf linked slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's security to her ties with him, turned down her bid to acquire private foreign security team while his main support US vice-president Dick Cheney opposed Benazir's return to Pakistan, a new book by a Pulitzer Prize winning US journalist Ron Suskind has revealed.
The book further says that US intelligence agencies taped Benazir Bhutto's phone calls, prior to her arrival in Pakistan, in a bid to "play under-the-table, cut-throat games more effectively". The Way of the World authored by Ron Suskind is full of disclosures, with its fair portion about Musharraf-Benazir conversation including Musharraf's quote: "You should understand something, your security is based on the state of our relationship". When Benazir was assassinated on December 27 last year, she was totally unprotected and a van containing a small band of policemen, untrained in anti-terrorism techniques, had already left the scene of murder.
Suskind writes that Benazir Bhutto’s case of returning to Pakistan was strongly backed by Condoleezza Rice-led State Department and equally opposed by Vice-President Dick Cheney who considered Benazir "complicated and unpredictable".
The book also discloses details of Benazir's meeting with US Senator John Kerry requesting for her security and his reply that "United States is generally hesitant to ensure the protection of anyone who is not a designated leader". The book said whenever Benazir Bhutto went harsh on Musharraf, the US ambassador in Islamabad advised her to "tone down any criticism of Musharraf". The author said Benazir often regretted that Cheney never called Musharraf asking him to "behave" and instead kept her pressing for coming to terms with him.
As Musharraf, during telephonic conversations, refused entertaining her demand of revoking provision barring her becoming PM for third time, Benazir said: "What you can give me (then)? May be some real reform in election commission".
Musharraf said: "She should not be hoping for much there (reforms), either".
The book reveals US intelligence once intercepted Benazir’s conversation with her son Bilawal. “They've been listening to her calls for months, including an earlier call she made to her son."
In that call, the book said, she told him (Bilawal) about the secret bank accounts that hold the family's fortunes that investigators have long suspected are ill-gotten. Therefore, when Benazir once floated the idea of freezing foreign accounts of "key people around Musharraf", a US official let her understand that the United States could, if need be, "constrain her assets" just as she was now suggesting they do to Musharraf.
The US intelligence agent harvested a number of portentous conversations of Benazir that were supposed to help the United States play its “under the table, cut-throat games” more effectively. The intercept could be cited inside the US government as evidence of Benazir’s unfitness and corruption. It would be used as part of a wider "carrot and stick" programme in which the United States let Benazir know they were happy to work with her in setting up a marriage with Musharraf, but they could make her life difficult if she started to improvise and freelance even after she comes to power.
According to the author, Benazir's representative started approaching the State Department in spring 2006 to work out a plan for her return, but White House began taking her seriously after the widespread demonstrations in the backdrop of sacking of chief justice. And this plan was aimed to shore up an embattled Musharraf, a single-issue ally.