ISLAMABAD: Diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks suggest that top world leaders consider President Asif Ali Zaradri has no vision to govern a country. According to a cable, President Asif Zardari was labelled a “numbskull” by former UK chief of defence staff Sir Jock Stirrup.
Stirrup had told this to visiting US officials two years ago. Other British officials echoed the line, with Peter Ricketts, the Foreign Office’s permanent undersecretary, characterising the Pakistani leader as having “not much sense of how to govern a country … I fear he talks and talks but not much happens”.
The Ministry of Defence’s policy director, John Day, added his view that Zardari’s principal strategy appeared to be asking for “lots of development aid … and meanwhile circumstances on the ground are getting worse”.
Their forthright comments were made to the Pentagon’s undersecretary for political affairs, Eric Edelman, on October 15, according to a cable sent from the US embassy in London to the State Department.
