By pure coincidence, Pakistan and India are both embroiled at the same time in domestic rows over their nuclear bombs.

In Pakistan, disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan kicked up a storm by saying that the Pakistan Army under President Pervez Musharraf knew about the illegal shipment of uranium centrifuges to North Korea in 2000 — contradicting his earlier confession that he acted alone in spreading Pakistan’s nuclear arms technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Although Khan has subsequently suggested his remarks may have been overplayed, they are nonetheless likely to raise anxieties overseas about Pakistan’s nuclear programme.  His statement, and partial retraction, have also spawned a range of conspiracy theories about which of Pakistan’s squabbling politicians stood to gain from it, as seen in the comments to this blog on All Things Pakistan.

India has an entirely different problem, but nonetheless one which stems from domestic politics. A nuclear deal with the United States which would have given its nuclear programme legitimacy and, it hoped, set it on the road to superpower status, has foundered on opposition from the Congress-led government’s communist allies. The government is hoping to salvage the deal with support from the regional Samajwadi Party before time runs out on the Republican administration of President George W. Bush.

What is interesting is how these two very different issues will play out in the minds of U.S. voters and on perceptions within South Asia of the U.S. presidential elections.

Pakistanis are already worried that Barack Obama, if elected president, would take a harder line on Pakistan than the outgoing Bush administration which stands accused of failing to tackle al Qaeda hideouts there. The row about Pakistan’s nuclear programme can only make the country more vulnerable to U.S. pressure,  says Pakistan’s The Post.  And all this comes at a time when some are beginning to say that Pakistan would be better off if John McCain were to be elected. “Most Pakistanis may prefer Obama,” writes Ikram Sehgal in The News, but ” pragmatism and national interest dictate that McCain suits us far better as the next U.S. president.”

India has always been wary of the U.S. Democrats, who have been tougher on nuclear proliferation than the Republicans. So while Obama might have charmed Non-Resident Indians in the United States (who admittedly are the ones who will vote),  at home McCain looks like a better bet for upholding the nuclear deal. “Obama good for the world, McCain good for India,” wrote a blogger on merinews.

Is this the first sign of a convergence of views between India and Pakistan on who they want to become the next U.S. president? Or is it too early in the campaign to see clearly which candidate the two countries would prefer? And in any case, would U.S. voters care?

The future of President Pervez Musharraf grows more opaque by the day. At its simplest level, it seems that while many people think he should step down, few want to see him forced out in a way that would divide and damage the country.

In the latest stories highlighting the currents and counter-currents swirling around the former army general, Musharraf lashed out at “rumour-mongers” for suggesting he planned to quit, while President George W. Bush telephoned him to pledge his continued backing.  Meanwhile disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, has begun speaking out against Musharraf by complaining he was unfairly made to take the rap for selling nuclear secrets.  That A.Q. Khan now feels safe to speak after four years under house arrest is seen as one of the most telling indications of the times turning against Musharraf.

Reading comments on an earlier blog about Musharraf’s future got me wondering whether one could predict his next move from his past. As an Urdu-speaking ”mohajir” whose family fled Delhi at partition, an outsider in Punjabi-dominated Pakistan, and also as a former commando, how would he respond to the pressure on him to quit?

There are simplistic responses to this question — my bet would be that the usual response of an outsider and a commando would be to fight it out, if needs be by adopting the riskiest course of action. But since that question seemed too simplistic, I decided to reread what Musharraf had said about himself in his autobiography “In the Line of Fire”.

My favourite lines were in the prologue: “I have confronted death and defied it several times in the past because destiny and fate have always smiled upon me,” he writes. “I first avoided death as a teenager in 1961, when I was hanging upside down from the branch of a mango tree and it broke. When I hit the ground, my friends thought I was dead.”

Musharraf doesn’t elaborate on the mango tree episode but he does paint a picture of a man who sees himself has having always defied the odds through luck or daring. The helicopter that crashed and which he missed because he was playing bridge. Two assassination attempts. The childhood memory of his mother’s tension when as a four-year-old boy he and his family fled by train from India to Pakistan.

This is a man who sees himself as a survivor, with fond memories of boys’ gangs in his childhood in Ankara. “Even at that age I was very good at making strategies and planning tactics to ambush and trap other gangs,” he writes — a line that carries extra resonance as he tries to outmanoeuvre opposition politicians who want to oust him.

I personally rather liked the story about how the outbreak of the 1965 war with India allowed him to escape a looming court-martial in the army for going absent without leave. He says he rescued his reputation by fighting in the war, and winning an award for gallantry for pulling shells away from a fire before they exploded.

Whatever critics have said about this autobiography, it certainly makes you think Musharraf’s next move will be far from predictable. A man who writes of his punishments in the army for ”fighting, insubordination and lack of discipline” is not one to toe the line easily. And yet again, he also writes of his fondness for Turkey which must, among other places, be a possible refuge were he to step down.