When US tried to force its terms for investment treaty By Idrees Bakhtiar

KARACHI: When former Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan resigned from Gen Musharraf’s cabinet in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reinstatement in July 2007 of ‘suspended’ Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, the Americans were not exactly regretful at Mr Khan’s departure, according to a ‘confidential’ US diplomatic cable accessed by Dawn through WikiLeaks. However, their reasons for being happy to see the back of him had nothing to do with the disastrous handling of the CJ issue by the Musharraf government’s legal team. In a cable dated August 6, 2007, then US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson wrote that despite her reservations over Mr Khan’s “controversial” replacement, “We will not be sorry to see Khan go, as he blocked further negotiations on the bilateral investment treaty over concerns about investor-state arbitration and other issues.” Ms Patterson had been expressing her views on the resignation of Mr Khan and the appointment of Malik Qayyum as the new attorney general by Gen Musharraf. “Both the incoming and outgoing attorneys general can be accused of bungling the case of what admittedly was an ill-conceived idea to suspend the Chief Justice,” wrote the former envoy. But she was very specific about the reasons for American displeasure with Makhdoom Ali Khan. Dawn contacted Makhdoom Ali Khan to get the context to Ms Patterson’s remarks. Mr Khan told this scribe that prior to the visit of US President George Bush in 2006, the US officials had been pressing Pakistan to sign the bilateral investment treaty (BIT). “They were insisting that the signing of this treaty was a must,” says Mr Khan. The initial pressure, according to Mr. Khan, came from the presidency itself. “Pakistani officials, including myself, had been in negotiations with the US officials to discuss the treaty,” he said, adding that it was a “sensitive matter” and the relevant documents had to be “vetted in the light of international laws and conventions.” He explained that Pakistan is a signatory to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a subsidiary of the World Bank, and has ratified its conventions. According to ICSID, if Pakistan signs an investment treaty and any of the treaty’s clauses is violated, the matter has to be referred for arbitration under the terms of the treaty. “We wanted to protect our side and I had told the Americans that we are ready to negotiate, but I refused to sign on the dotted line,” he said. According to him, there had been many clauses in the treaty which were against the interests of Pakistan.