Condoleezza Rice and Shaukat Aziz: Twice as good

Islamabad, May 21: Pakistan’s moral police must be wishing they had a Condoleezza Rice instead of a Nilofar Bakhtiar in the country’s cabinet.

Days after they had forced Bakhtiar out as tourism minister, for “immodestly” hugging her 70-year-old paragliding trainer, comes claims of how Rice had been a model of chastity when the Pakistan Prime Minister tried his charms on her.

The US secretary of state’s just published biography says she had stared a “puffed up” Shaukat Aziz down, reducing him to a state where he abandoned his “seductive baritone” and started “babbling”.

But, however, overjoyed hardline Pakistani clerics may be, Islamabad today rubbished the “harsh and unprecedented” language in the book.

“I will just describe them as a trash,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said. “It is all trash, which does not even deserve any comment.”

Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power, by Newsweek chief of correspondents and senior editor Marcus Mabry, says the incident happened during Rice’s first trip to Pakistan in 2005.

“When Rice sat down with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who fancied himself a ladies’ man, Aziz puffed himself up and held forth in what he obviously thought was his seductive baritone. He bragged — to western diplomats, no less – that he could conquer any woman in two minutes,” the author writes.

“(He tried) this Savile Row-suited gigolo kind of charm: ‘Pakistan is a country of rich traditions’, staring in (Rice’s) eyes…. There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charms on her as a woman, and she just basically stared him down. By the end of the meeting, he was babbling.

“The Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably. And his (Aziz’s) voice visibly changed,” the author wrote.

Deputy information minister Tariq Azeem, however, argued Aziz had merely shown respect for Rice according to Pakistani traditions which tell men to be nice and decent with women.