New Delhi, Sep 8: Britain had pressed President Asif Ali Zardari to send ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha to India following the 2008 Mumbai attacks but the Pakistani Army had vetoed the move, WikiLeaks has indicated.
According to a US diplomatic cable leaked by the whistleblower website, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband had pressed for sending Pasha to India following the attacks as Miliband “described ISI MG Pasha as a welcome ‘new broom' and expressed UK support for ISI reform”.
“Zardari gave (British High Commissioner Robert) Brinkley a long answer about various levels of directors in ISI but finally confirmed that the Army had vetoed the decision to send Pasha,” the US cable said.
The Pakistan President told Miliband that it might be possible to send National Security Advisor Mahmud Ali Durrani, as he outranked Pasha.
“It would not be possible, said Zardari, to send Pasha immediately as Zardari needed to work public opinion first,” said the cable written by then US ambassador to Pakistan Anne W Patterson to Washington five days after the Mumbai carnage that left over 160 persons including six Americans dead.
According to the cable, Zardari saw an opportunity to strike back at his enemies in the global outcry following the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks “In the conversation with Miliband, Zardari said he saw the attacks as an ‘opportunity to strike at my enemies',” it said.
Patterson said the details about the conversation between Zardari and Miliband were made available by the UK mission in Islamabad through a “readout”.
“We received a readout from the UK embassy on their meetings/calls over the weekend. High Commissioner Brinkley and UK COS met President Zardari on Sunday, November 30; during the meeting FM Miliband called Zardari. UK passed the same Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) info to Zardari that they previously had passed to ISI,” Patterson wrote.
The US ambassador had termed Zardari's response as “positive”. The Pakistan President, however, criticised the Indians for making statements that had “pushed Islamabad on the defensive”.
“Zardari's response was positive; he said ISI had to follow up and this was an opportunity. He criticised the Indians for statements that pushed Islamabad to make a defensive response and ‘made my job harder',” the US cable said.
Zardari had also expressed his doubts that terrorists could have launched attack boats from Karachi and that “the operation could not have been implemented without insider help from Indians”.
Miliband had encouraged the Pakistan President by saying that “public messaging would be particularly important to link the Mumbai atrocity with Zardari's own campaign against militants.
“Miliband said that LeT needed to ‘feel the full force of the law',” the cable said. Zardari responded by saying he was setting up special courts, was contacting all political parties, and would take action immediately, it said. PTI
