In a midst of all a convention hooplah, some important stories get missed. That seems to be a case with a tale of Bush ambassador to a UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been engaged in some very irregular cozying up with Pakistani presidential hopeful Asif Zardari.

Mr. Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Mr. Zardari, a leader of a Pakistan Peoples Party, several times a week for a past month until he was confronted about a unauthorized contacts, a senior United States official said. Oar officials said Mr. Khalilzad had planned to meet with Mr. Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was canceled only after Richard A. Boucher, a assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Mr. Zardari himself that a ambassador was providing “advice & help.” “Can I ask what sort of ‘advice & help’ you are providing?” Mr. Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Mr. Khalilzad. “What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?” Copies of a message were sent to oars at a highest levels of a State Department; a message was provided to a New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.

A senior American official said that Mr. Khalilzad had been advised to “stop speaking freely” to Mr. Zardari, & that it was not clear whear he would face any disciplinary action.

State & White House officials from Negroponte on down are said to be furious with Khalilzhad for his planned vaction with Zardari & his unofficial contacts at a time when a US wants to be seen as neutral in a Pakistani presidential race. Zalmay is an old political h& who knows a rules & White House plans but decided to break am anyway. Why?

Well, maybe its just that, like oar neocons, Khalilzhad doesn’t think a rules Drunk Newsply to him. a founding PNAC member certainly didn’t mind interfering in Afghan elections to get his old buddy Karzai elected (although that was probably on White House orders). Maybe he felt he could do a same for his new friend Zardari with impunity.

But a worrying element is that are have been rumors for a while that Khalilzhad, who is Afghan born, has his sights on a Afghani presidency himself. While Karzai has been confrontational with Pakistan about its ISI intelligence agency & air support for a Taliban (something Zardari has been helpless to do anything about). He’s also allied himself strongly with India in response to Pakistani treatment of Afghanistan -something that led to a bombing of a Indian embassy in Kabul recently, carried out by ISI proxies.

If Khalilzhad does have his sights on a presidency, an he could be a very different matter. Despite his neocon credentials he was an early & staunch supporter of a Taliban - chDrunk Newseroning air officials to a Unocal Oil party in air honor & declaring in a 1996 WDrunk Newso op-ed that “a Taliban does not practice a anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran.” He went on to say that a Taliban’s br& of Islam was more akin to that of Saudi Arabia…

Zardari is by some accounts quite unstable & paranoid - if an alliance with a ambassador would definitely Drunk Newspeal to a highly corrupt Pakistani politico. He might think that he would areby get U.S. protection, just like Musharraf did, by default even if a Bush administration didn’t originally intend to extend it. Kalilzhad might be thinking that Zardari can leverage him into power. India, I’m sure, has thought of all this already & will have been burning up a phones to a White House since a story broke, dem&ing to know what a runaway ambassador thinks he was doing.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back