The United States said on Friday it was reaching out to a wide range of political players in Pakistan after the death of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto - a move critics said Washington should have begun years ago.
As Bhutto was buried amid violent protests across Pakistan, US officials contacted representatives of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, the parties backing President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
The message, according to State Department spokesman Tom Casey, was a mixture of condolences and encouragement to continue a political transition to democracy that many analysts fear has been shattered by Bhutto's assassination on Thursday.
The United States, which worked hard to broker an arrangement that allowed Bhutto to return from exile and to convince Musharraf to hold elections and share power with her, now faces a huge void with its key anti-terrorism ally.
"Without her on the scene, the way forward is a lot dimmer and harder to grasp," said analyst Frank Wisner, a retired diplomat and executive of the AIG insurance firm.
But Wisner said the guiding principle for US policy must be: "We don't have a relationship with one person or any leader or leaders. We have a relationship with Pakistan." Casey rejected suggestions that Washington was looking to groom a new favourite in Pakistan.
"US policy isn't to anoint candidates or pick leaders for Pakistan or for any other country," he said. "Our goal in Pakistan is to support a political process, to support the development of democracy, to support a government that has the broadest possible support from all that country's people," Casey said.
"DECLINING ASSET" MUSHARRAF Critics of US policy in Pakistan say the energy spent on achieving that goal has come too little and too late - following eight years of backing army strongman and President Musharraf as the only man able to combat Islamic militancy.
"This idea that Musharraf can get out there and wage the good fight is really folly," said RAND Corp analyst Christine Fair. Musharraf has been a "declining asset since 2004," when he started cutting deals with Islamists to remain in power, she said. He lacked Bhutto's ability to sell the war on terrorism to the public and is now widely, if unfairly, blamed in Pakistan for her death, added Fair.
Fair's advice to US policymakers is "the same it was a week ago and the same as it was five years ago: They need to really reach into the Pakistani polity and engage with a much larger scope of actors than just the army and Musharraf."
Such an outreach would "broaden the US portfolio of relations" in Pakistan to opposition politicians, human rights commissions, lawyers and NGOs, she said.
The United States would continue to work with Musharraf and the government of Pakistan as well as with all moderate political forces, Casey said. Key questions for the United States include whether a Pakistan People's Party completely dominated by Bhutto, and her father before her, can survive her demise and whether Sharif will cooperate with a United States he sparred with as prime minister in the 1990s.
"Bhutto did have an able second tier who always kept their heads down while the boss lady was around," Wisner said of the PPP. "We'll see if any of them are able to come forward now and rally the troops and give them some sense of coherence."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had a brief telephone call on Thursday, limited to condolences, with Amin Fahim, Bhutto's successor as head of the PPP.
Sharif, whose two terms as prime minister were dogged by accusations of graft, was groomed by the military dictator who ruled Pakistan in the 1980s in 1991 tried to make Islamic Sharia law the supreme law of Pakistan.
"Sharif is a proven leader, but also a controversial one and one whose role is uncertain, whose support is uncertain and whose relationship with Musharraf was considerably more troubled than that of Bhutto," said Anthony Cordesman, security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.