Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday held a meeting with the country's army and intelligence chiefs to discuss the regional security situation and the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, reflecting the easing of tensions between the civilian and the military leadership.
Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has approved an extension to lieutenant general ahmad shuja Pasha as director general of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence for a period of one year.The decision to retain general Pasha in uniform and as ISI DG was taken because of his commendable role in the ongoing war against terrorism, The News quoted a well-placed defence source, as saying.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency has categorically denied any links with the Taliban.The Daily Times quoted ISI Director General Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha as saying that the ISI is a professional agency and does not have links with any militant outfit, including the Taliban. Pasha's remarks came during a meeting with Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta, National Security Adviser Lieutenant General James Jones and other officials.
Chief of Pakistani intelligence agency Inter Services Intelligence Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha on Monday rushed to Saudi Arabia after holding talks with Saudi intelligence officials in Islamabad who had come on King Abdullah's direction to cool down growing tensions between Pakistan and the United States, media reports said.
High Commissioner Sabharwal and the ISI DG were tight-lipped about the developments. When this scribe told Lt Gen Pasha that Pakistan was doing a lot to improve relations with India but the response from India was not very encouraging, he said, "Let's hope for the best, things will definitely improve."
Amid intense US pressure to deliver on the war on terror, the chief of Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence has been shunted out of Islamabad and replaced by Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, considered close to the reform-minded Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
"It is interesting that the US claims to want a democratic Pakistan, but whenever there's a congressional delegation that goes to Pakistan, they don't meet their counterparts in the National Assembly. They all want to meet General Kayani and General Pasha, because they understand that's where the power lies," said Christina Fair of the Georgetown University.
Pakistan's report on its probe into the dossier provided by India into the Mumbai terror attacks was on Monday examined in Islamabad, by a top level cabinet committee, headed by Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, before being handed over to New Delhi.
Much is being made of Kayani's attempt to surround himself with his own men. That is only partially true and in many ways legitimate too. However, it does not seem that he would have unnecessarily pushed Lt-Gen Taj out of the ISI in less than a year of the latter's having taken charge of the agency if internal and external actors had not begun to cast doubts over the agency's internal and external conduct
When then ISI director Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha visited Washington, DC for a meeting with CIA Director Michael Hayden, he admitted that the planners of the Mumbai attacks included some 'retired Pakistani officers' and that the attackers had 'ISI links, but this had not been an authorised ISI operation.'
The world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden spending several years in a mansion in Abbottabad.
Several retired and serving military officers attend Pervez Musharraf's funeral prayers.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claims that ISI got hold of bin Laden in 2006 after paying bribes to some of the tribal leaders
Through its early days to the 1980s, Pakistan sought to expand its sphere of Islamic influence through Afghanistan to Central Asia and got Pakistani citizens recruited in the Afghan government institutions in the 1990s when the Taliban were power. Now, it is looking eastward through India to Bangladesh and Myanmar to establish an imaginary caliphate.
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