The Hindu Business Line : <I>Offguard General </I><I> </I>

The President of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, has got into a problem with his defenders and detractors alike by ignoring, while writing his book, In the Line of Fire, an unwritten but essential convention observed by smart authors. Which is that one holding public office, especially the top slot, should put his urge to beat his own drums in print on hold until he is a free individual. Otherwise, there is a real risk of his spilling sensitive secrets or giving away clues to ongoing decision-making, which may be exploited by inimical interests.

Gen Musharraf is already under attack from his opponents for violating his oath and publicising official secrets to the nation's detriment. He had better take these accusations seriously, for they may come back to haunt him when he is no longer in power, just as some of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's unguarded notings became his undoing later.

At least two of the disclosures in the General's book are of a kind no worldly-wise person would have gone to town with. The first is the threat of the US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Richard Armitage, after 9/11 that the US would bomb Pakistan back to Stone Age if it did not kow-tow to the US on terrorism. Is it not demeaning to Pakistan to imply that its "cooperation" in combating terror was a result, not of its conviction, but of the US putting a pistol at its temple?

The second is his admission that the Government of Pakistan was the recipient of millions of dollars from the CIA as prize money for capturing and handing over Al Qaeda suspects. Besides doing nothing to enhance the country's self-respect, this rash revelation has also shown the US in an unsavoury light not only about the sordid means it adopts, but also about the tragic irony of its money being routed to the ISI and used to finance further terrorist operations.

How did it escape the General that such matters are best handled quietly behind the scenes between governments, and not splashed vaingloriously in public?

B.S.RAGHAVAN

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