Thursday, November 17, 2011

Hussain Haqqani offers resignation in memo row

ISLAMABAD: The government said on Thursday that it has not decided whether to accept a resignation offer from its ambassador to the US over a reported attempt to enlist Washington’s help to rein in the country’s military after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The government has summoned Ambassador Husain Haqqani to Islamabad to question him about any role he may have played in the growing controversy, which was first disclosed in an Oct. 10 column in the Financial Times, said Farhatullah Babar, a Pakistani presidential spokesman.
Mansoor Ijaz, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, said in the column that a senior Pakistani diplomat asked him on May 9, a week after US commandos killed bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town, to pass a message from President Asif Ali Zardari to the US asking for help. Ijaz did not name the diplomat.
Zardari was reportedly worried that the US raid had so humiliated his government, which did not know about it beforehand, that the military may stage a coup, something that has happened repeatedly in Pakistan’s history, said Ijaz.
The memo sent to Adm. Mike Mullen, the top US military officer at the time, reportedly offered to curb support to militants from Pakistan’s military intelligence service, the ISI, in exchange for American assistance, Ijaz said.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry has called the Financial Times column ”a total fabrication.”
But Mullen’s spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, confirmed to Foreign Policy’s website on Wednesday that Mullen did receive the memo from Ijaz, but he did not find it credible and ignored it.
Haqqani said on Thursday that he did not write or deliver the memo, but offered his resignation to end the controversy.
”I do not want this non-issue of an insignificant memo written by a private individual and not considered credible by its lone recipient to undermine democracy,” Haqqani told The Associated Press.
Haqqani is expected to travel to Islamabad in the next few days so that the government can determine who should be blamed for the incident, Babar said. He said the government has not received a formal letter of resignation from Haqqani, and talk of what would happen to him was ”premature.”
The controversy is said to have outraged the Pakistani army, considered the most powerful institution in the country. The army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, met with Pakistan’s president in recent days, but the outcome of those discussions is unclear.
Haqqani’s resignation would create more uncertainty in the already troubled relationship between Pakistan and the US. The bin Laden raid in the town of Abbottabad severely strained ties, as have US drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area along the Afghan border.

Mullen’s spokesman admits existence of secret memo

WASHINGTON: The spokesman for former Chairman US Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Mike Mullen confirmed the existence of a secret memo alleged to have been sent by President Zardari to Admiral Mullen.
A Pakistani businessman alleged in a column in the Financial Times last month that a senior Pakistani diplomat asked for assistance in getting a message from Zardari to Admiral Mike Mullen, at the time chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The author, Mansoor Ijaz, alleged that Zardari feared a military takeover following the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May and brought unprecedented public scrutiny on Pakistani leaders.
Asked about the memo referred to in the Financial Times column, Captain John Kirby, who was Mullen’s spokesman until the admiral stepped down earlier this year, said Mullen initially had no recollection of such a memo but was later able to track it down.
“Neither the contents of the memo nor the proof of its existence altered or affected in any way the manner in which Adm. Mullen conducted himself in his relationship with Gen. Kayani and the Pakistani government,” Kirby said. “He did not find it at all credible and took no note of it.”
He gave no further details.
Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington has offered to resign after reports that his boss, President Asif Ali Zardari, asked Washington for help to stave off a military takeover.
There has been speculation in the Pakistani media that Haqqani had been involved in the conception or communicating of the memo.
“I have not been named so far as having done anything wrong by anyone except through innuendo. No memo of the kind being discussed in the media was drafted or delivered by me,” Haqqani said.
“I should like to add that since I was appointed ambassador in 2008, some people have consistently vilified me as having been involved in undermining the Pakistani armed forces. Which I have never done.”

MQM conveys concerns over Mirza to Zardari

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari assured a delegation of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) on Thursday that its reservations on Zulfiqar Mirza’s visit to London would be addressed, DawnNews reported.
The delegation conveyed its reservation on the activities of Mirza in London to the president during a meeting held at the Presidency.
Zardari told the delegation that Mirza was visiting London in a personal capacity and that his visit had nothing to do with the policy of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
Former Sindh home minister Zulfiqar Mirza was likely to hold a meeting with Scotland Yard officials and it was speculated that he would share evidence against the MQM with it.
The PPP Sindh chapter had already suspended the membership of MPA Imdad Pitafi and had issued a show cause notice to the provincial information minister Sharjeel Memon who accompanied Mirza on his visit to London.