The message of the suicide bombers responsible for the devastating assault on the Marriott hotel in the heart of Islamabad on Saturday, which reduced the 290-room hotel to a skeleton and left 53 people dead, was simple and chilling.
"We are powerful enough to attack any target we choose, and will do so until the Pakistani government stops its military strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and elsewhere."
The most audacious terrorist atrocity in the Pakistani capital "“ widely described as "Pakistan's 9/11" "“ has given added significance to the meeting that President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan will have with President George Bush on Tuesday at the United Nations in New York.
Bush will likely highlight the latest bombing to stress that the resurgent Taliban and al-Qaida are a growing threat not only to Afghanistan but also to Pakistan, and that the Zardari government must redouble its effort to crush them by destroying their bases in Fata and the Swat Valley in the North West Frontier Province.
Zardari will have little choice but to agree with Bush, whose government is providing more than $1bn a year in military and economic aid to Pakistan.
But pro-American, secular Zardari faces a Herculean task. Anti-Americanism is rife in Pakistan, and exists not only among ordinary citizens but also the ranks of the security forces, from the regular army to paramilitary Frontier Corps and police.
To most Pakistanis, the military strikes against the Islamist militants in Fata and the Swat Valley, 100 miles north of Islamabad, are tantamount to "Muslims killing Muslims" for the sake of America. They believe that under the guise of conducting "war on terror", Bush is waging "war on Islam". The two countries he has invaded so far, Afghanistan and Iraq, are almost wholly Muslim, they say.
Despite that fact that North Korea, a member of Bush's "Axis of Evil", tested an atom bomb, and that its leader, Kim Jong Il, is a tyrant, responsible for deaths of an estimated 2 million people due to the famine caused by his policies, Bush has not attacked North Korea. Why? Because North Korea is not a Muslim nation, most Pakistanis maintain.
Against this backcloth of rampant anti-Americanism, Zardari needs to devise a strategy that allows him to distance his government from the United States and repress Islamist extremists on a nationalist agenda of maintaining law and order and the territorial integrity of Pakistan. Still, such a strategy would need to be underwritten by regional powers.
Zardari is reported to have drafted such a plan. It envisages the convening of the representatives of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, India, China, and Russia to discuss the burgeoning threat of Islamist terrorism, and formulate a common, cooperative strategy. At that gathering America and Britain will be present, but only as observers.
"A consensus [of the regional states] is necessary so that the war on terror is not considered an American war but is owned by all countries," the Zardari position paper states.
Whatever the merits of the Zardari plan, which are considerable, it is unlikely to appeal to Bush. The last thing Bush wants is to see the US downgraded to a bit-player in the armed onslaught on Islamist radicals. He is embarrassingly aware of his bravado statement about Osama bin Laden after 9/11: "We'll get him, dead or alive".
Anxious to catch or capture Bin Laden, widely believed to be ensconced in Fata, before he leaves the White House in January 2009, Bush will pressurise Zardari to intensify military attacks in Fata while keeping intact his secret authorisation to the Pentagon's Special Operations Forces, stationed in Afghanistan, to enter Fata without even informing Pakistan to kill or capture the "bad guys".
Such acts will undermine the legitimacy of the Zardari government, alienate Pakistan's military high command, and feed anti-American feelings among ordinary Pakistanis. But by then a retired Bush will be busily cutting brush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.