Pakistani inquiry said to widen

November 21, 2011|By Associated Press

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s powerful army intelligence chief personally intervened to check details surrounding a secret memo asking Washington to rein in Pakistan’s military following the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the man who made the memo public said yesterday.

Lieutenant General Shuja Pasha, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, flew to London to meet with Mansoor Ijaz on Oct. 22, less than two weeks after the US businessman of Pakistani origin disclosed the existence of the memo in a Financial Times column.

A senior ISI official said he had no knowledge of the meeting but did not deny it occurred. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have authorization to talk to reporters.

Pasha’s reported involvement shows how seriously the army is taking the scandal, which could cost Pakistan’s ambassador to the US his job and also threatens to engulf the country’s president.

Ijaz has claimed that the ambassador, Husain Haqqani, orchestrated the memo and assured him that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had approved it. Both have denied the allegations, although Haqqani has offered his resignation to end the scandal.

The ambassador returned home yesterday to answer questions about the memo, which Ijaz sent in May to Admiral Mike Mullen, the top US military commander at the time. He said he sent it through an intermediary a week after a covert US raid killed bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town.

The memo has shocked many Pakistanis.