Zardari-Palin encounter creates a flutter in Pakistan

Islamabad, Sep 28 (PTI) Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's recent offhand compliment to U.S. vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin has created quite a flutter in the real and the virtual world.

During his meeting with Palin in New York on the
sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Zardari called her
"gorgeous" and said "now I know why the whole of America is
crazy about you".

And when Zardari was asked to keep shaking hands with
Palin for the cameras, he said, "If he's (the aide) insisting,
I might hug."

In the virtual world blogs have been dedicated to the
"meeting". One such blog is titled "Zardari flirts with Sarah
Palin -- calling her gorgeous and offers to hug" and gives
details of the Zardari-Palin encounter.

"I do not mean to suggest that this is in anyway a crime,
but being the President of Islamic Republic of Pakistan there
are some protocols that should be adhered to in an effort to
uplift the respect and dignity of Pakistan and to the office
he has been assigned," wrote a blogger called "teethmaestro".

He also claimed to have warned about such a faux pas in
an earlier post. "As suspected from my earlier post where I
shuddered at the thought of what Asif Ali Zardari might serve
up to Washington during his trip to attend the U.N. General
Assembly, well the games have begun...".

Several jokes are doing the rounds on the meeting and
Facebook has dedicated two groups to the encounter. A group
called "Zardari should marry Sarah Palin for the sake of world
peace!" has enrolled 13 members so far.

"Well critics can go on and on but I feel His Excellency
Honourable President of Pakistan should marry Sarah Palin for
the greater good of humanity and ... this matrimony will stop
the incursion of U.S. forces in Pakistan," wrote the creator
of the group.

Another member of the group accused Zardari-Palin of
colour-coordinating their clothes and said polo races may soon
be witnessed in the White House. Another group created on
Facebook "just for fun" has dedicated a song on the
Zardari-Palin encounter.

Instep magazine dedicated a full page to the high-profile
meeting, citing some other such Pakistani encounters. The
magazine quoted from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice's biographer, Marcus Marby, who wrote about Rice's
meeting with Pakistan's former prime minister Shaukat Aziz in
his book "Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to
Power"

"Aziz often boasted that there wasn't a woman he could
not seduce. But as the story goes, the alleged charm didn't
work on the US Secretary of State," the report in Instep read.

"Yet, when Rice sat down with Prime Minister Shaukat
Aziz, who fancies himself as ladies' man, Aziz puffed himself
up and held forth in what he obviously thought was his
seductive baritone (He bragged -- to western diplomats, no
less -- that he could conquer any woman in two minutes)," the
magazine quoted from Marby's book.

"(He tried) this Savile Row-suited gigolo kind of charm:
'Pakistan is a country of rich traditions,'" staring in
(Rice's) eyes," a participant at the meeting recalled. "There
was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his
charms on her as a woman, and she just basically stared him
down. By the end of the meeting, he was babbling, The
Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably."

The magazine also wrote about late former premier
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's alleged legendary affair with Husna
Sheikh and General Yahya Khan's "association" with Pakistan's
nightingale Noor Jehan. PTI RHL