They don't believe that civilians can govern Pakistan.

There is a lot of evidence that civilians can't govern it well, and from their point of view, we would rather have a military guy we know, who is on our side, than an uncertain civilian. From their point of view, that is a correct judgment because we are not very popular among the Pakistani civilians -- partly because we are supporting the military. That is the irony of it.

So it's a sort of chicken and egg situation?

Yes, that's seems to be the kind of ironic situation. But I know that NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) military, (and) our military is very unhappy with Pakistan and have complained to Pakistan for allowing the Taliban to function within Pakistan. Of course, the Pakistani army denies that but there is a lot of evidence that the Taliban is really based in Pakistan -- in Quetta, not so much in Waziristan.

Apparently when (US Vice-President Dick) Cheney went out to Pakistan a couple of months ago, he virtually read the riot act to Musharraf over the resurgence of the Taliban and also links with Al Qaeda elements based in Pakistan. According to US intelligence, the Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar, were all in Quetta...

Yes. I mean, they are seen there regularly. It's no secret that they are there. Now, the Pakistanis have turned over one or two Taliban, but the unit cost -- giving the amount of aid we are providing Pakistan -- is enormous. It is like a billion dollars per Taliban. But I think the root problem is that we are asking the Pakistanis to do about six different things -- you go down the list, it's democratisation, it's reform the economy, it's normalisation with India, it's Taliban, it's Al Qaeda, it's the nuclear issue, it's the (renegade nuclear scientist) A Q Khan issue.

So, we are asking them to do a lot and we are giving them a lot of money, but we've never made it clear exactly what we want for our money.

There are different American agencies that want different things from Pakistan. And, so from the Pakistan point of view, we have this huge list of things we want them to do. They probably can't and don't want to do everything. They'll do what they think they have to do and that may not match up exactly with our demands because our demands are all over the place.

There are very little serious, frank discussions between the Americans and Pakistanis even at a high level. When two of our friends -- Musharraf and (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai are insulting each other publicly, then we have a serious problem in terms of diplomacy. And I don't think it's a sustainable relationship.

So, I think the Pakistanis are looking for options themselves, but they want to retain the US relationship as long as it's beneficial. But they are very angry at all the demands we have made at them.

Image: British soldiers conduct a fighting patrol outside the Delhi Patrol Base in the desert in the Garmsir district, southern Helmand province, Afghanistan.
Photograph: Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images

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