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Decision to send ISI chief to India draws flak

ISLAMABAD: The decision by the Pakistan People’s Party-led government to send the Director-General, Inter-Services Intelligence, to India has drawn flak from Opposition parties, which dubbed it as “hasty” and tantamount to an “admission of guilt.”

Only the rare voice has come out in support of the decision, which is being more widely perceived as an affront to established diplomatic procedures between two countries.

The Indian allegation that the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks came from Pakistan, specifically Karachi, has not gone down well in Pakistan.

The Pakistan link has been denied by most political actors, including Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Since Thursday evening, following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s veiled references to the Pakistan links in the attacks, television channels have dismissed the allegations as a habitual exercise by India in “a blame game” that had no basis in hard evidence.

There have been several kinds of Pakistani reactions to the Mumbai attacks. One category has been of outright condemnation and sympathy with India and Mumbai, a city that most Pakistanis immediately associate with the much-loved Bollywood.

This correspondent received several phone calls from Pakistanis expressing outrage and dismay at the attacks and fear for relations between the two countries.

As evident from calls to a range of talk shows, many Pakistanis have also preferred to see it as India’s comeuppance, something that was well-deserved, while many also view it as a large India-U.S.-Hindu-Jewish conspiracy to “defame” Pakistan.

Against this background, it was unsurprising that Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) spokesman Ahsan Iqbal described the decision to send ISI D-G Lt. Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha as “hasty.”

“Although we are committed to extending full co-operation in the investigations, it should be done through established diplomatic channels and norms. [The government] did not take the PML(N) leadership into confidence on the decision to send the ISI chief to India,” Mr. Ahsan said, adding that previous allegations against Pakistan had proven “incorrect.”

The PML(N) spokesman said it appeared as if Pakistan had given in to a “summons” from India.

The discredited Musharraf-created party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), also voiced its opposition. Spokesman Tariq Azim said the decision to send the ISI chief to New Delhi amounted to “an admission of guilt” by Pakistan.

The former Director-General of the ISI, Lt. Gen. (retd.) Asad Durrani, told The Hindu that he did not support the decision, but it was the “prerogative” of the government.

“As an individual, I would not have supported this decision. It would have been sufficient to send a couple of experts, and the decision whether or not to send the D-G could have come later, on the basis of what India had to offer in terms of evidence. But it is the government’s prerogative to make the decision,” said Lt. Gen Durrani.

The former diplomat, Tariq Fatemi, who is close to the PML(N) leader Nawaz Sharif, offered a nuanced reaction to The Hindu.

In principle, Mr. Fatemi said, he was opposed to the decision, as it was “irregular” of “any country to demand of another country that it send a high official, military or civilian.”

But, said the one-time Pakistan Ambassador to the U.S., in the context of India-Pakistan relations and in the background of an “extraordinary” situation such as the one after the Mumbai attacks, the government had made the “right” move.

“At this moment, anything that is done to assuage Indian concerns and anger at the attacks is for the good,” Mr. Fatemi said. But, he warned, “the reactions to this will be negative.”

Hours after the decision was announced, Prime Minister Gilani was defending it before a domestic audience. In Lahore, where he is at present, Mr. Gilani told journalists that he had called Dr. Singh to express Pakistan’s condemnation of the attack.

He said Dr. Singh had called him after the Marriott attack in Islamabad, and “today I reciprocated.”

The Pakistan Prime Minister talked about Dr. Singh’s reference to “preliminary evidence” pointing towards Karachi.

“I said, Prime Minister, we want to maintain excellent relations with our neighbours. We have excellent relations with Afghanistan, and we have excellent ties with India. We must maintain this because we have to focus on the real issues that face our countries — poverty, hunger and disease.

“We don’t want to fight with each other because we have to fight [these issues],” said Mr. Gilani.

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