Zardari agreed to send ISI chief to India after 26/11

Washington: 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.

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"Zardari gave Brinkley a long answer about various levels of directors in ISI but finally confirmed that the Army had vetoed the decision to send Pasha. Zardari told Miliband that it might be possible to send NSA Durrani, as he outranked Pasha," it said.

The President said it would not be possible to send Pasha immediately as he needed to work public opinion first, the cable said.

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According to the cable, the British diplomat passed the same intelligence information about Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to Zardari that they previously had passed to the ISI.

"Zardari's response was positive; he said ISI had to follow up and this was an opportunity. He criticised the Indians for statements that pushed Islamabad to make a defensive response and 'made my job harder'.

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"Zardari said he thought it was not possible that terrorists could have launched attack boats from Karachi and the operation could not have been implemented without insider help from Indians," the cable says.

In the conversation with Miliband, Zardari said he saw the attacks as an "opportunity to strike at my enemies".

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The attack, he said, was aimed as much at Pakistan as at India, but India had reacted in an unfortunate way.

"Miliband said that public messaging would be particularly important to link the Mumbai atrocity with
Zardari's own campaign against militants," it said.

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Zardari told Miliband that "my people" had not brought specific information to him about the individuals named in the information passed to ISI (on the day before).

Miliband said that LeT needed to "feel the full force of the law".