ISI chief declines seperate meeting with Hollbrooke and Mullen

[maverick1977]

ISPR denies ISI chief declined to meet US officials
Updated at: 2305 PST, Tuesday, April 07, 2009
ISPR denies ISI chief declined to meet US officials ISLAMABAD: Director General Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Athar Abbas denied that ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha has declined to meet US special envoy Richard Holbrooke and Admiral Mike Mullen.

He said General Pasha was also present in the meeting of Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani with US officials.
ISPR denies ISI chief declined to meet US officials - GEO.tv

Dont you love GEO for propagating false information... how many times has GEO done that. countlesss !!!! sensationalism is created more than the reality by news agencies..
Even if Pasha was not present in the meeting then i am sure GEO gave it a twist. something fishy about this new channel.. seems very anti army...

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

The US has been bashing the ISI for the last couple of months. ISI should take a stance against this bashing.

 

[Screaming Skull]

ISI has contacts with extremists: Gates​

DAWN.COM | World | ISI has contacts with extremists: Gates​

By Anwar Iqbal

Tuesday, 07 Apr, 2009

WASHINGTON: The ISI’s contacts with the Hekmatyar, Haqqani and the Nazir groups are a real concern for the United States, says US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates.

In a recent interview to an Afghan television channel, Mr Gates also expressed concern over Pakistan’s agreement with the militants in Swat saying that such deals only allow the militants to reassemble and revive their strength.

‘The ISI's contacts with some of these extremist groups —with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Haqqani network, Commander Nazir (sp) and others —are a real concern to us,’ said Mr Gates.

‘We have made these concerns known directly to the Pakistanis. And we hope that they will take action to put an end to it.’

‘Are US drones flying from Afghanistan to hit militant hideouts in the Pakistani territory?’ he was asked.

‘I can't talk about our military operations, obviously. But the president (Obama) has made clear that we will go after al Qaeda and their planning cells and their training centres, wherever they are in the world.’

The journalist reminded him that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had assured Pakistan he respects the country’s sovereignty. ‘So if the drones hitting targets inside Pakistan fly from Afghanistan, will not be disrespect to the sovereignty of another country?’ the journalist asked.

‘Well, all I can say, again, is that our priority is going after al Qaeda. And we will go after them wherever they are,’ Mr Gates replied.

Talking about US concerns over the Swat peace deal, Secretary Gates said that similar agreements in 2005 and 2006 led to an increase in the number of violent extremists coming across the border into Afghanistan.

The militants, he said, no longer had to worry about Pakistani troops because of the deals that were made under President Musharraf.

Mr Gates said he believed the Pakistani government was coming to understand that the militancy in the NWFP was as great a danger to the government in Islamabad as it’s to Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army, he said, was now fighting the militants and thousands of Pakistani soldiers had died while combating these extremists.

‘One of our goals in this new strategy is to see how we can improve cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, who have a common interest in getting rid of these extremists.’

Asked what the US could do to persuade Pakistan to adopt a more effective policy against the militants, Mr Gates said Pakistan was a sovereign country, and so the US could only encourage it to fight the militants as a partner in this war.

‘What we are doing is making clear to them that we are prepared to be a long-term ally and partner of Pakistan; that we will help them deal with their security problems.’

The United States, he said, was prepared to provide gear and training to enhance Pakistan’s counterinsurgency capabilities.

‘We're also prepared to try and provide additional economic assistance to Pakistan because they face a number of challenges in that area as well.’

 

[TruthSeeker]

Well, obviously Gen. Pasha is a busy, busy man.... But I don't blame him. How many Americans is he supposed to have to educate? It is probably tiring to go through the same blah, blah, blah with every foreigner who wants to lecture you. Now, if he refuses to meet with CIA chief Panetta, a peer-to-peer meeting request, that would be a big deal.

 

[Patriot]

ISI has contacts with extremists: Gates​

DAWN.COM | World | ISI has contacts with extremists: Gates​

By Anwar Iqbal

Tuesday, 07 Apr, 2009

WASHINGTON: The ISI’s contacts with the Hekmatyar, Haqqani and the Nazir groups are a real concern for the United States, says US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates.

In a recent interview to an Afghan television channel, Mr Gates also expressed concern over Pakistan’s agreement with the militants in Swat saying that such deals only allow the militants to reassemble and revive their strength.

‘The ISI's contacts with some of these extremist groups —with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Haqqani network, Commander Nazir (sp) and others —are a real concern to us,’ said Mr Gates.

‘We have made these concerns known directly to the Pakistanis. And we hope that they will take action to put an end to it.’

‘Are US drones flying from Afghanistan to hit militant hideouts in the Pakistani territory?’ he was asked.

‘I can't talk about our military operations, obviously. But the president (Obama) has made clear that we will go after al Qaeda and their planning cells and their training centres, wherever they are in the world.’

The journalist reminded him that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had assured Pakistan he respects the country’s sovereignty. ‘So if the drones hitting targets inside Pakistan fly from Afghanistan, will not be disrespect to the sovereignty of another country?’ the journalist asked.

‘Well, all I can say, again, is that our priority is going after al Qaeda. And we will go after them wherever they are,’ Mr Gates replied.

Talking about US concerns over the Swat peace deal, Secretary Gates said that similar agreements in 2005 and 2006 led to an increase in the number of violent extremists coming across the border into Afghanistan.

The militants, he said, no longer had to worry about Pakistani troops because of the deals that were made under President Musharraf.

Mr Gates said he believed the Pakistani government was coming to understand that the militancy in the NWFP was as great a danger to the government in Islamabad as it’s to Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army, he said, was now fighting the militants and thousands of Pakistani soldiers had died while combating these extremists.

‘One of our goals in this new strategy is to see how we can improve cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, who have a common interest in getting rid of these extremists.’

Asked what the US could do to persuade Pakistan to adopt a more effective policy against the militants, Mr Gates said Pakistan was a sovereign country, and so the US could only encourage it to fight the militants as a partner in this war.

‘What we are doing is making clear to them that we are prepared to be a long-term ally and partner of Pakistan; that we will help them deal with their security problems.’

The United States, he said, was prepared to provide gear and training to enhance Pakistan’s counterinsurgency capabilities.

‘We're also prepared to try and provide additional economic assistance to Pakistan because they face a number of challenges in that area as well.’

Why the Pakistan intelligence agency's close ties with the Taliban should not be condemned

No matter how much leverage you hold over a country, it is rare that you can get it to act against its core self-interest. The United States has struggled with this dilemma for decades in regards to its relations with Israel and South Korea. Self-interest based on the facts of geography is what makes America’s relations with these two close allies particularly fractious. Israel has long refused to scale back settlements in the occupied territories, frustrating U.S. efforts at peacemaking, even as American soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conversely, South Korea has, in certain periods, extended an olive branch to the North Korean communists, frustrating U.S. efforts to erect a strong, united front against the Pyongyang regime. Now the U.S. faces the same problem with another of its ostensible allies, Pakistan.

The U.S. demands that Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its spy agency, sever relations with the Taliban. Based on Pakistan’s own geography, this makes no sense from a Pakistani point of view. First of all, maintaining lines of communications and back channels with the enemy is what intelligence agencies do. What kind of a spy service would ISI be if it had no contacts with one of the key players that will help determine its neighbor’s future?

This is particularly the case when one considers the long and unruly land border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and how both countries form one organic region. Indeed, Sugata Bose, a history professor at Harvard, in 2003 described the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier area as “historically no frontier at all,” but the very “heart” of an “Indo-Persian and Indo-Islamic economic, cultural, and political domain that had straddled Afghanistan and Punjab for two millennia.” The fact, which we all keep repeating, that there is no solution for Afghanistan without a solution for Pakistan, is itself an indication of the extent to which both countries are joined. This makes it even more crucial for the ISI to maintain contacts and highly developed networks with all principle Afghani political and guerrilla groups.

We've done the same thing ourselves. In 1976, U.S. special envoy Talcott Seelye was able to effect the evacuation of American diplomats and their families from war-torn Beirut only because of contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a group that we weren’t supposed to be talking to at the time. And all agree it was a grave mistake on our part to have abruptly left the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region after the fall of the Berlin Wall, letting our own carefully constructed networks there wither on the vine.

Remember, it wasn’t radicals burrowed deep within the ISI who made the decision to help bring the Taliban to power in the mid-1990s: it was the democratically elected government of the western-educated Benazir Bhutto who did that, on the theory that the Taliban would help bring stability to Afghanistan. This history indicates the degree to which talking to the Taliban has broad support within the Pakistani political establishment.

The Pakistani military and political establishment both view Afghanistan through the lens of their conflict with India. When they look to the west they envision an “Islamistan” of Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries with which to face off against Hindu-dominated India to Pakistan’s east. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, with his pro-western and pro-Indian tendencies, gets in the way of this Pakistani vision. But even if Pakistan were to come to terms with Karzai, it would still need to have lines of contact with all Afghan groups, including the Taliban.

Of course, we can and should demand that Pakistan cease helping the Taliban to plan and carry out operations. But cutting links to the Taliban altogether is something the Pakistanis simply cannot do, and trying to insist upon it only worsens tensions between our two countries.

So what do we do? There are those who say we should abandon the Afghanistan enterprise altogether, with the exception of direct strikes against al-Qaeda. But President Barack Obama has already decided against that, and is adding both troops and civilian experts to the campaign, which amounts to Afghan nation-building in all but name. The hope is that by turning the tide of the war in our favor, the Pakistanis will, for the sake of their own self-interest, cut a better deal with the pro-western Karzai, even as they continue to maintain less-harmful, low-level links with the Taliban. That is the best we can expect.

As in Iraq, we may find that in order to make progress and find an exit strategy, we will have to engage in negotiations with some of the very people we’ve been fighting. At some point we may even end up negotiating with elements of the Taliban ourselves. The one thing that we cannot afford in this messy situation is to issue very public, cut-and-dried ultimatums to our purported friends.
Talking to the Taliban - The Atlantic (April 6, 2009)

 

[S-2]

Here's the link-

Talking To The Taliban-Atlantic

Article is by Robert Kaplan, a senior fellow at CNAS now run by Lt. Col (retd.) John Nagl.

Nice find, saadahmed.

 

[ejaz007]

ISI chief refuses to meet US officials: reports
Updated at: 2235 PST, Tuesday, April 07, 2009


ISLAMABAD: ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha declined to meet with US special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen here on Tuesday.

According to some reports, he refused to meet the visiting American officials in protest against allegations leveled against ISI.

It may be mentioned here that US envoy Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen, who arrived here on Monday for a two-day visit, held separate meetings with President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

ISI chief refuses to meet US officials: reports

 

[Awesome]

ISI has contacts with extremists: Gates​

DAWN.COM | World | ISI has contacts with extremists: Gates​

By Anwar Iqbal

Tuesday, 07 Apr, 2009

WASHINGTON: The ISI’s contacts with the Hekmatyar, Haqqani and the Nazir groups are a real concern for the United States, says US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates.

In a recent interview to an Afghan television channel, Mr Gates also expressed concern over Pakistan’s agreement with the militants in Swat saying that such deals only allow the militants to reassemble and revive their strength.

‘The ISI's contacts with some of these extremist groups —with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Haqqani network, Commander Nazir (sp) and others —are a real concern to us,’ said Mr Gates.

‘We have made these concerns known directly to the Pakistanis. And we hope that they will take action to put an end to it.’

‘Are US drones flying from Afghanistan to hit militant hideouts in the Pakistani territory?’ he was asked.

‘I can't talk about our military operations, obviously. But the president (Obama) has made clear that we will go after al Qaeda and their planning cells and their training centres, wherever they are in the world.’

The journalist reminded him that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had assured Pakistan he respects the country’s sovereignty. ‘So if the drones hitting targets inside Pakistan fly from Afghanistan, will not be disrespect to the sovereignty of another country?’ the journalist asked.

‘Well, all I can say, again, is that our priority is going after al Qaeda. And we will go after them wherever they are,’ Mr Gates replied.

Talking about US concerns over the Swat peace deal, Secretary Gates said that similar agreements in 2005 and 2006 led to an increase in the number of violent extremists coming across the border into Afghanistan.

The militants, he said, no longer had to worry about Pakistani troops because of the deals that were made under President Musharraf.

Mr Gates said he believed the Pakistani government was coming to understand that the militancy in the NWFP was as great a danger to the government in Islamabad as it’s to Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army, he said, was now fighting the militants and thousands of Pakistani soldiers had died while combating these extremists.

‘One of our goals in this new strategy is to see how we can improve cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan, who have a common interest in getting rid of these extremists.’

Asked what the US could do to persuade Pakistan to adopt a more effective policy against the militants, Mr Gates said Pakistan was a sovereign country, and so the US could only encourage it to fight the militants as a partner in this war.

‘What we are doing is making clear to them that we are prepared to be a long-term ally and partner of Pakistan; that we will help them deal with their security problems.’

The United States, he said, was prepared to provide gear and training to enhance Pakistan’s counterinsurgency capabilities.

‘We're also prepared to try and provide additional economic assistance to Pakistan because they face a number of challenges in that area as well.’

Nothing wrong in having contacts with extremists. I bet we have contacts with Indian Army people too. I bet CIA has much deeper contacts with the Al Qaeda.

It's good to have contacts with the enemy.

 

[Omar1984]

Nothing wrong in having contacts with extremists. I bet we have contacts with Indian Army people too. I bet CIA has much deeper contacts with the Al Qaeda.

It's good to have contacts with the enemy.

As the saying goes, keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer.

 

[ajpirzada]

great... he was present when they hold a meeting with Gen Kyani and i guess that was gud enough. no point meetin them in person when they are tryin to make u a scapegoat.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

as u are aware, Gen Kiyani Saab himself was head of ISI previously.....therefore all this insult against ISI is irritating everybody.


the political wing has been disbanded. Everyone and their mother knows that Lt. General Pasha is not only professional soldier, he is also known for his STAUNCH ANTI-TALEBAN views


it is most unfortunate that these americans are easily brain-washed people. I think Obama's policy advisors are too young, and too immature.


ISI is a professional organization. There are rumours that some operatives have been in contact with ''taleban'' elements such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. What is wrong with that? People like Hekmatyar are anti-Mullah Omar.


the americans dont want Pakistan to be strong in Afghanistan, despite the fact that over 35% of Afghanistan's imports come from Pakistan. And of course, indian dont want Pakistan to have influence in Afghanistan.


that is what this is all about......



ISI/Fauj Zindabad

 

[vkurian]

Interesting, OP could you update us with a link when you get the chance.

He's an officer of your Armed Forces isn't he? He's not showing much discipline if he talking to the media indicating that he can do as he pleases. If Gen Kayani or your President orders him, who is he to disobey? If true this development kind of encapsulates the problem you people have with your Agencies.

Well this is the real issue!!!!!!!!!!

ISI is like any other intelligence agency and does everything that other Intel agencies do. So nothing wrong with it as they are doing just what they are supposed to do.

The difference is other nations in the world have intelligence agencies but in Pakistan the intelligence agency has a nation.

They have nothing but interest of Pakistan in mind no questions about it but the have a mind of their own and doesn’t want to be answerable to the civilian government. This is not the first time its happening late Benazir Bhuto in her book has also written how ISI tried to undermine her authority.

This is why the world is concerned about ISI as they are not party to any thing the GOP says and it is a major embarrassment to GOP and others who have agreements to GOP.I feel it is a good and effective organization but the independent thought process has to be controlled.

 

[Interceptor]

he should have met them, and threw the aid agreement papers at their faces.

hence good news anyways.

Its more to do with principals here, his organization (ISI) is alleged of assisting LeT and other banned separatist. For him to take this stance is more than justified he has to up hold the credibility of his organization. He is doing the state a favor for not meeting appointed envoys by Obama.

 

[ajpirzada]

well its for sure that he had backing of both political and military establishment. or else its not quite possible to simply refuse meeting any american official. if u look at the tone of both politcal and military leadership, it was similar and both seemed to be standing at a converging point.

 

[nwmalik]

way to go
USA has never stuck to the promises. Never trust uncle sam.