Hina Rabbani Khar wants proof of ISI-terror nexus

Apparently Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan's youngest and first female foreign minister, has had it with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen's incessant indictments of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence.

The demure Khar last week challenged the United States to provide hard evidence to back up its charges that the ISI is duplicitous and is maintaining terrorist proxies like the Haqqani network for strategic depth in Afghanistan.

Khar demanded that if there is "serious evidence for such public recriminations to be made, that evidence is shared with us, that we are considered to be worthy partners. And, if that is not the case, I am afraid we will both lose out. We, in Pakistan, have a huge problem  -- quite frankly speaking -- with public statements which are coming in from this country (the US), which point fingers at Pakistan, which are completely unnecessary because our troops, our military, which is considered to be hand-in-glove (with terrorists), is the one who has lost its soldiers (in the war on terror)."

Appearing on MSNBC's cable news programme and asked to respond to Mullen's charges, she said, "I would like to tell your public that we have lost more soldiers than all of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) forces combined. This is indeed a big task. We have to fight together."

She questioned angrily why the likes of Mullen in the midst of this war on terror "want to create scapegoats, because success as we perceived it may not be coming."

If such public recriminations continued, she said, "Then we would all lose out."

Mullen, both in a farewell appearance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee before he retires this week, said the ISI had provided the wherewithal and support for the Haqqani network to carry out the recent attack against the US embassy in Kabul.

"There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Haqqani was behind the attack on the American embassy the other day," Admiral Mullen said at Carnegie.

And he told the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, "The Haqqani network, for one, acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy. In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan -- and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI -- jeopardises not only the prospect of our strategic partnership, but also Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence."
Khar retorted on the MSNBC programme, "I am sure you agree with me when I say the ISI is no more or less powerful than the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) or certainly no more than the CIA. Now, if we raise a constant incursion into Pakistani militants who have been shown the door from Pakistan, who in operations, which have cost us lives of our soldiers many times over and there is a constant sea of incursions from there, which come and kill men, women and children in Pakistan, we do not point fingers at CIA."

US troops, she argued, "are present on the other side of the (Pakistan-Afghanistan) border. We expect them to take the same responsibility that is demanded of our troops. There are many different forces coming into play in the region that we are both in partnership with in trying to fight these elements."

Khar implied that Mullen's pillorying of Pakistan and the ISI was in bad taste, especially since she had had "this long engagement" with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"We had a three-and-a-half hour, very intensive, very constructive meeting, and if I were to take a gist out of it, it was that we have to work together more, rather than separately," Khar said of her meeting with Clinton.

"We must recognise the situation as it exists --- it's a difficult situation and we must put our heads together to be able to deal with the situation. We have a partnership, we have talks going on at every level, and I have said to the secretary of state that my government under President (Asif Ali) Zardari and Prime Minister (Yusuf Raza) Gilani are committed to fight this scourge," she said.

With regard to the Haqqani network, Khar said, "All terrorists, who attack innocent civilians or major installations, are against both of our interests. We have no qualms in saying that whatsoever. (But) if Pakistan, instead of being recognised for the great sacrifices and the costs that it has paid for this war that we are fighting, and that we are at the forefront of, that is not recognised, and instead if blaming is started, then we will both lose out."