Wikileaks: Post 26/11, Pak Army dismissed Zardari proposal to send ISI chief to India

Thu Dec 02 2010

Pakistan's powerful Army had vetoed President Asif Ali Zardari's proposal to send ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha to New Delhi that came on British insistence to calm down tensions with India following the Mumbai terror attack, a secret US cable made public by WikiLeaks shows.

The confidential document shows that the then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband had called Zardari, asking him to send the ISI chief to India, to which the President readily agreed. He, however, was overruled by the Pakistani Army led by General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.

Miliband described Major General Pasha as a welcome "new broom" and expressed UK support for ISI reform.

Zardari said the new ISI leaders were "straightforward" and their roles were proscribed by the Constitution, but it would take time for real conversions.

Robert Brinkley, the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, and Miliband pressed for Pasha to go to India, said a US cable issued by its Embassy in Islamabad on December 1, 2008.

Source: Indian Express.
Link: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/wikileaks-post-26-11-pak-army-dismissed-zardari-proposal-to-send-isi-chief-to-india/719227/.