January 3, 2008
Few minutes after Bhutto’s assassination, the media told us that oil-prices rose at least $1, although Pakistan is not oil-producer country, but the media didn’t explain why this rise, the nearest "convincing" explanation was "Shockwave" [from the CNN], but a small report appeared on the front page Elaph for about 15 minutes and then removed [I was just in time to save it], explains it all.
The article says that the security and economical relations between Pakistan and the Gulf-states started with the so called "war on terror", but as far as I know, it is older than that, think about the case of BCCI bank which was used by CIA to finance Afghan’s Mujahdeen against the Soviet invasion, it was a Pakistani bank in UAE.
Fears of political aftershocks in the Arab Gulf-states after the assassination of the opposition leader in Pakistan.
Gulf states faced embarrassment in dealing with the situation in Pakistan due to the relations with all parties, namely the current government led by President Musharraf, who has complex security, economic relation with some Gulf-states, and the opposition leaders who were hosted and provided shelter by both the Saudi Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.
A source said that the rise in oil prices after the assassination Bhutto is an evidence of the size of the security interdependence between the Gulf states and Pakistan, since the start of the global war on terrorism."
According to the source the problem faced by the Gulf states is the "wrong choice between supporting Musharraf’s Government who seems weak against the accusations of being behind the assassination of Bhutto, or towards the opposition despite that they were unable to cope with the security situation".
The risks threatening the Gulf and Arab investments in Pakistan, which increased in the last decade, largely because of the relative stability experienced by Pakistan at the beginning of Military Presidency of Musharraf, or because of the economic reforms initiated by Pakistan which led the Government to allocate Arab investors to share in large number of banks and government companies.
Number of Pakistan’s banks have become the property of Arab and Gulf investors, in addition to communications companies said that a number of Syrians investors work in the front line for the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family own shares.
Also the Hariri of Lebanon invested with Nawaz Sharif and later failed to mediate between Pervez Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif last Augustus.
Harirri was embarrassed later by the Pakistani reaction saying: [they do enjoy a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia, so they do not require mediation by a person exercising political activity in another country.]
