This has to be one of the best stories of the election. Yesterday, Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens was indicted of concealing over US$ 250,000 in “gifts” from an oil company looking for favors. The oil company used the Senator to secure business contacts in Pakistan and Russia, along with other favors.

According a report in the LA Times, in the last week of October 1999, Pakistan was desperate to remove powerful military and economic sanctions imposed after the successful nuclear tests in 1998. Stevens was chairman of the conference committee that was overseeing the change. But according to Capitol Hill sources, Senator Stevens made it clear that he wanted Pakistan to resolve a multimillion-dollar dispute with an Alaskan construction and engineering company, VECO, owned by his close friend Bill Allen.

For the background, a June 2003 LA Times report:

A provision giving the White House permanent authority to lift the sanctions against Pakistan appeared to be sailing through Congress - attached to the Defense Department appropriations bill that was moving through Stevens’ conference committee.

But it ran into trouble with Stevens, who was also the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and its Defense Department appropriations subcommittee.

Stevens raised the issue of a contract dispute VECO was having with Pakistan over payment for VECO’s participation in construction of a US$ 70 million pipeline. He wanted Pakistan to resolve it. Some of the people involved maintain that Stevens said he would not pass the provision until VECO was taken care of, while others said his intervention was more benign.

The ever famous Charlie Wilson, who was Pakistan’s lobbyist at the time: Read more »

Guest blogger Roy Kamphausen is the director and vice president for political and security affairs of the Washington Office of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR).

An issue that came up often in Monday’s NBR-sponsored debate on U.S.-Asian relations in the next administration was the question of instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Both campaigns talked about the importance of addressing the terrorist haven that has developed in the tribal areas of Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan. This would allow the United States to reduce the number of cross-border attacks into Afghanistan and the accompanying danger posed to the United States and to the Pakistan by the presence of these terrorists. There was agreement that more funding for infrastructure projects, training for Afghan security forces and more U.S. and NATO troops are needed in Afghanistan, although they differed on how many and what type, and on what compromises might have to be made in U.S. military commitments in Iraq.

The Obama/Biden camp argued Bush and McCain had not taken the Afghanistan problem seriously several years ago, and that the Bush administration is now making a last attempt to kill or capture Bin Laden by attacking targets within Pakistan, an action that has drawn Pakistani fire. These actions, they argued, threaten to undermine the new civilian government in Pakistan as well as the larger U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Read more »