Zardari offers meeting of Indo-Pak intelligence chiefs

Lalit K Jha

Washington, May 11 (PTI) Pakistan army had turned down
the government's proposal to send Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) chief to India in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror
attacks as it believed it was "too soon", Pakistan President
Asif Ali Zardari indicated Monday.

A fresh offer has now been made for a meeting of
intelligence chiefs of the two countries, he said without
giving any details about when this meeting is expected to take
place or what has been India's response to it.

"They (Pakistan army) thought it was too, too soon,"
Zardari told the NBC News in an interview on being asked why
he was overruled by the military on sending ISI chief Lt Gen
Ahmed Shuja Pasha to New Delhi.

The Pakistan President claimed he was not "overruled"
by the military and said, "eventually we have offered for the
intelligence chief to meet (his Indian counterpart).

This is for the first time that Zardari has publicly
given an explanation of why he was not able to send the ISI
chief to New Delhi despite the fact that Pakistan Prime
Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had made the promise in this
regard to his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh over phone on
November 28 in the middle of the Mumbai attacks.

This was cited as an example of the military and the
ISI overruling the democratically elected Government of
Pakistan.
Asked who is in control of Pakistan - the President or
the military, Zardari said, "I think the military is in
control of their hemisphere and I'm in control of the whole
country."
Q- Can they overrule you?
Zardari- No, I can overrule them.
Q - Haven't they overruled you in the past?
Zardari - No, we've gone to their position and they
have come to our positions.
Q- But you still have a final say?
Zardari - The Parliament has final say. It's the
Parliament that forms government, and I'm a product of
Parliament.
In the last couple of days, Zardari has stated that he
is waiting for the Indian elections to be over so that
Pakistan can start a fresh dilagoue with India.
In his interview, Zardari reiterated that he does not
consider India as the primary threat to his country and
asserted that Pakistan at present is at war with the Taliban.
"It's a war of our existence. We've been fighting this
war much before they attacked 9/11. They're kind of a cancer
created by both of us, Pakistan and America and the world," he
said.
Zardari, who was here to attend a trilateral summit
with his counterparts of the US and Afghanistan last week, met
US President Barack Obama and his top officials and discussed
the strategy to deal with Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. PTI