The first question is: who needs a deal most? Many assert that it is Benazir Bhutto who is desperate for a deal with Musharraf. The reasons for this are well-known: She wants that corruption cases against her in the Swiss court should not be pursued, the sentence pronounced on her in absentia should not be implemented, and she should be allowed to return to participate in politics and run the election campaign of Pakistan Peoples Party. If she succeeds, she will possibly inherit the prime ministerial office, if her showing in the election is as good as expected.

From another viewpoint, it is Musharraf who happens to be in trouble and needs substantial political help in his present predicament. What is the predicament? It is the judicial crisis he created by taking the ham-handed action against the Chief Justice of Pakistan on March 9, and keeping him incommunicado for a week after staging a well-organised police attack on the TV channel, GEO, under the very nose of the Information Minister Muhammad Ali Durrani, if not under his direction.

The legal fraternity's agitation seems to have become a self-accelerating one that, after two months, still looks likely to grow, especially as opposition parties are sure to intensify their role.

True, President Musharraf is lucky that the opposition parties are so badly divided, and that the largest mainstream party, the PPP, is ready to serve office under the uniformed president and the deformed constitution as it stands now.

This master statute subordinates the whole elected system to the pleasure of the president (Musharraf). Even otherwise, any ruler would be happy to receive the additional political support that PPP appears to be promising.

The real question is what will the deal do? Quite a few assessments have been made. The first is that it is unlikely to stop the slide in the president's popularity; incumbency factor is gaining momentum. Then, it cannot resolve the judicial crisis one-way or the other. And this judicial crisis is the immediate problem for Musharraf. True, PPP's accession to the Musharraf camp would strengthen his resolve, and the likelihood of his election going smoothly through the existing assemblies, as their swan song, will increase.

The thought recurs: the dynamics of the legal fraternity's agitation, and its inherent possibilities, will not be affected by Benazir's strengthening the military controlled regime. This action would be seen by most as a betrayal of the people's trust. People see PPP's place to be in the ranks of opposition to what is a military regime.

There are larger issues regarding the country's place in the world. Pakistan is a non-Nato ally of the US in the war against Islamic terrorism. But its relations with US, Nato and Hamid Karzai alike are becoming increasingly fraught with mistrust. Western allies do not appear to trust Musharraf: They see him as half-hearted in countering Taliban, though his zeal in eliminating al-Qaeda militants continues to be praised.

The relations with America have always been a keystone of Pakistan's foreign policy, although there is some recent propaganda that Pakistan can very well do without American aid, and if America is disillusioned with the Musharraf regime, let it withhold the aid if it wants to.

Dr. Ishrat Hussain, who has been entrusted with this job, may be right; one agrees with him that it is quite feasible for Pakistan to do without the American aid that comes with so many strings attached.

But one cannot help commenting that Pakistan has always found the aid to have strings attached, and has always gone along as much as it could in the past, including the recent past. But, now that a unilateral break from the other side looms, this kind of propaganda may be making a virtue of necessity.

The fact is, and no politically aware person should ignore it, that American aid, and the way it is disbursed, has been Manna for Pakistan's elite classes. Much of the aid ends up with these social and economic elite -- and it hardly ever percolates down. Even the Americans know it.

Which is why the Yanks are so confident that stoppage of this aid would hurt the Pakistani elite, who are so used to soft living, hard. But this is something that PPP has to worry, because she may be joining a ship that is adrift and risks sinking.

On her part, Benazir is the staunchest pro-American politician in Pakistan, and she should know what she is doing by joining Musharraf: Americans may or may not like to bolster the military regime. But it is quite possible that injection of PPP into a seriously amended Musharraf system might make the latter more acceptable to the Americans in the short run: She can be trusted more than Musharraf.

The fact that BB would be discrediting herself by joining the Musharraf regime when it is at its weakest is a matter about which she should be the best judge. Whether her political stature will go up or down is what she has to examine. But, more than that, PPP would be dealt a heavy blow by this betrayal of the ordinary worker who has been brought up on a rhetoric of democracy and opposition to dictatorship.

The party will gradually lose its ability to pull votes on a big scale. Before long, it might cease to be the largest party. Indeed the chances in the 2007 election, if held, are not likely to improve by this action.

It will strengthen the military's power immensely by showing that even at such a dark hour, when the army-controlled regime run by its top general is at its weakest and faces an uncertain future, a politician with a reputation to guard is ready to climb the general's rickety bandwagon. True, Benazir has served office under the military's guidance before. That is not something new for her. She will probably do what may be even more dangerous for democracy.

By deserting the opposition ranks in today's conditions, she will be leaving the field to MMA and PML(N), both of which have used ambiguous Islamic rhetoric, the former more substantially than the latter's rather vacuous slogans. If the agitation of the lawyers and an anti-dictatorship campaign by the opposition parties go ahead simultaneously, the ultimate beneficiary would be MMA.

Remember the 1977 agitation: it was originally about holding another, and fairer, election. But, before long, the religious parties with their stronger vocal chords, made the whole agitation morph into the demand for Nizam-e-Mustafa. That can happen again. The process of Talibanisation of Pakistan is likely to accelerate.

Finally a word about the deal's possible terms: PPP loyalists still believe that BB cannot accept this Musharraf constitution, and the president in uniform will be elected by outgoing Assemblies or another 2002-like election. She will insist on scrapping the Article 58 (2) (b).

Musharraf can be ready to accept such terms, would he have done what they did on March 9 in the Army House? He seems still determined to implement his known programme. The only likely deal is for BB to cooperate with Q League and MQM.

MB Naqvi is a leading Pakistani columnist.