One of the questions that repeatedly came up during Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s rather eventful trip to the U.S. last month was who was in charge of the Inter-Services Intelligence , especially after the botched attempt to bring the powerful spy agency - that critics see as a state within a state - under the interior ministry.

But at home, Pakistanis are asking an even more fundamental question: Who really is in control of  their country ? A very rough poll conducted by All Things Pakistan among people who visit the blog found that nearly 40 percent thought nobody was in control of the nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 160 million and from where at least the Americans are convinced the next major militant attack is coming.

About 28 percent said Pakistan People’s Party chairman Asif Ali Zardari was in control while 18  percent saw President Pervez Musharraf still calling the shots. But nobody, not one person, thought Gilani who, by all accounts was given a rather blunt message by his American hosts about his government’s failure to fight militants and their allies within, was in charge.

For Pakistan’s transition to democracy after nine years of military rule this is hardly inspiring. “The image of a prime minister who noone thinks has any power is sad and disturbing,” ATP notes in a later post and asks whether he is on his way out. Or, it asks, is the poll a broader warning of a country sliding further into chaos?

Gilani’s government is faced with Islamist militancy across Pakistan’s northwest and an America that is breathing hard down its neck asking for action. On top of that tensions with India on the eastern borders have suddenly and inexplicably risen, which doubtless increases the pressure on an army already overstretched on the Afghan frontier

 Gilani’s four-month-old coalition is fractured following the withdrawal of ministers belonging to Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League over the issue of reinstatement of judges fired by Musharraf. On Tuesday, the two sides were meeting to break the stalemate.

Adding to the sense of crisis, is an economy at risk of meltdown with acute power shortages, and higher fuel and food prices that have hit hard the poor majority.

Time magazine called Gilani an “accidental” prime minister leading a government too weak to act on any front including the faltering campaign against militancy or even the economy. Pakistan’s respected Dawn newspaper has gone to the extent of questioning Gilani’s authority in promising Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh an investigation into allegations that the ISI helped plan the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last month. How could he have done that without taking the country  into his confidence, the newspaper asked.

Not surprising then, that the Daily Times reports that Gilani may quit if he is not allowed to function as a chief executive with a definite say in government.

The leaders of India and Pakistan have a chance this weekend to stop things from spinning out of control when they gather in Colombo for a summit of South Asian nations.

The mood has decidedly turned sour in India, especially after the bombing of its embassy in Kabul which the Indians, the Afghans and now the Americans - according to a report in the New York Times- have blamed on Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence. Attacks in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, a day apart, and then the most serious eruption of gunfire across the Line of Control in Kashmir since a 2003 truce have further increased concern that a four-year peace process is rapidly coming apart.

Pakistan, hemmed in by an increasingly restive American force on its doorstep over the border in Afghanistan, and militant groups chafing within, has its own and perhaps even more serious set of problems. On Thursday a bomb went off outside its consulate in the western Afghan city of Herat,  and you begin to wonder if the foes have turned Afghanistan into a full-blown proxy battleground 
like it was during the Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States.

In a sign of the chill that has crept back into the relationship, the two sides even delayed an announcement of a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani in Colombo, which is the custom at the annual summits of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and which invariably overshadows the conference.
 
But meet they will, say most analysts and editorialists,  if nothing else to stop a further slide in ties. For all the outrage in India over the bombing in Kabul followed by the impersonal, indiscriminate and savage attacks in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, there isn’t an appetite for ratcheting of tensions with Pakistan.

There should be even less so in Pakistan, as it grapples with even bigger threats on its western borders with the Americans threatening to go after al Qaeda and Taliban, if its fails to do so, with or without permission from Islamabad.