Pakistan's ISI chief among Time's 100 most influential people

Pakistan's ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha has made it to the list of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world along with dignitaries like United States President Barrack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Pasha's profile on the magazine's website was written by former Central Intelligence Aagency director Michael Hayden, who described him as "a Pakistani patriot and American partner" trying to manage the difficult task of reconciling the two roles.

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Within weeks of Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha's becoming head of Pakistan's top intelligence agency, ISI, in 2008, terrorist attacks in Mumbai seriously roiled already stressed US-Pakistani relations," Hayden wrote.

"Pasha, 59, has grown progressively more suspicious of US motives and staying power. The arrest of a US government contractor in Lahore has led to acrimony. And larger changes in Pakistan -- the growth of fundamentalism, nationalism and anti-Americanism -- have squeezed the space in which any ISI chief can cooperate with the US," he wrote.

Pasha, a Pakistani patriot and American partner, now must find these two roles even more difficult to reconcile -- and at a time when much of US counter-terrorism success depends on exactly that, Hayden concluded.

The ISI chief, a close confidant of powerful army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was recently given his second one-year extension of service by the civilian government.

Time magazine's 2011 list also includes world leaders like Obama, Hillary Clinton, US Vice President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Markel.