Re: Kayani calls emergency corps meeting
http://www.washingtonbanglaradio.com/content/93373711-pakistan-recalls-foreign-minister-usa
Islamabad/New York, Sept 25: Days after Pakistan lashed out at the United States for linking Islamabad with terrorism, the relationship was further strained on Sunday as Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani asked Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to return home from the United States where she is attending the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.
Gilani asked Khar to return after Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani held a security meeting of his top commanders in the wake of USA allegation that the Pakistan spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had links to the Haqqani network.
A spokesman for the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, however, admitted ISI’s links with the Haqqanis but said it is a contact that any intelligence agency would like to maintain with other groups, Geo News reported.
Haqqani group is blamed for a several attacks on US groups and its embassy in Afghanistan capital Kabul.
Prime Minister Gilani also spoke to various political parties in Pakistan to discuss the security situation after the bitter acrimony with the USA.
Earlier, even though the U.S. sticks to its official stand on Pakistan being an “important strategic ally” against the war against militancy, top American security officials have been steadily growing louder in expressing their doubts over Islamabad’s commitment.
In a congressional testimony, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen on Thursday had accused Pakistan’s ISI of backing last week’s militant strike on the American Embassy and NATO headquarters in Afghanistan.
Asserting that the U.S. had credible evidence, Mullen had accused the ISI of supporting the Haqqani insurgent network, a part of the Taliban, in the Kabul assault and also a bomb attack days earlier that injured 77 American soldiers.
The U.S. official said that the Haqqanis, who share historical ties with the Pakistan since 1980s Afghan war against Soviets and are believed to be based in the country’s North Waziristan tribal area, function as “a veritable arm" of the ISI.
Mullen said that Pakistan was “exporting violence” and threatening their success in Aghanistan, in the strongest criticism of the nuclear-armed unstable ally since the beginning of the Afghanistan war nearly ten years ago.
“In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan’s opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence,” Mullen said.
“They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power. But in reality, they have already lost that bet,” he added.
Responding to the harsh words, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar had dismissed the charges as mere allegations, warning thee U.S. that it could not afford to alienate the her country’s government or people.
“If they are choosing to do so, it will be at their own cost,” Khar told Pakistani news network Geo TV on Thursday from New York City.
“Anything which is said about an ally, about a partner publicly to recriminate it, to humiliate it is not acceptable,” she said, in a stern assertion that the U.S. would lose it as an ally if allegations persisted.
Echoing Khar, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Karachi had said that Americans could not effectively fight the ongoing war in Afghanistan without Pakistan’s assistance.
“They can’t live with us. They can’t live without us,” he had said.
(except for the last part, there I agree with CM).