Out of bottle, memo genie confronts Zardari

ISLAMABAD - President Asif Ali Zardari is facing one of his most serious political crises after former US joint chiefs of staff chairman Mike Mullen confirmed Thursday he had received a message, allegedly relayed from the president days after the Osama bin Laden raid, pleading for help to prevent a military coup in Pakistan.

The ‘memogate’ scandal was full blown on Friday with the publication of the treacherous yet disputed memo, showing that Zardari regime had literally gone to the extant of compromising national security in wanting and offering selective cleansing of national security institutions, particularly the ISI, and offering help against the existing leadership of both al-Qaeda and Taliban.

The memo also promised to allow the US to propose names of officials to investigate bin Laden's presence in Pakistan, allowing it greater oversight on Pakistan's nuclear weapons and bring to justice the perpetrators of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Coming to light of this secret memo asking Washington for help reining in the Pakistani military in return for extraordinary favours further threatened Pakistan envoy to US Husain Haqqani and intensified mistrust between the civilian and military establishment, shifting the pressure to President Zardari and his party’s government that is already deeply unpopular.

Haqqani is alleged to have got written the memo to the then top US military officer during the domestic turmoil triggered by the US raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, asking for his assistance in installing a ‘new security team’ in Islamabad that would be friendly to Washington.

These revelations have sparked a fresh political storm in Pakistan and if proved authentic, it would reinforce politically toxic charges that the government is colluding with the United States against the interests of the country and its army.

The sensitivity of the situation led PPP to call a meeting of its core committee on Friday and deciding to investigate the matter and punish the culprits, if any. Sources said the party stalwarts termed the situation grim and said that the opposition was taking advantage of the circumstances and attacking the government on this front. President Zardari directed PPP leaders to effectively counter the opposition’s propaganda.

Main opposition party PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif Friday said that security and sovereignty of the country was on stake and called for the formation of a commission to probe the suspected secret memo. The ambassador, who has denied having anything to do with the memo, has already been summoned to Islamabad to clarify his position and there were reports that his removal from the post has already been decided.

Some analysts have speculated that President Zardari himself could be in danger if charges that he approved the memo gain traction. "The target is not me, the target is President Zardari and Pakistani democracy," Haqqani was reported as saying.

Speaking via telephone from Washington, Haqqani told a private news channel that he was due to board a direct flight to Pakistan on Friday evening. He reiterated that he never drafted or had any one draft a memo, nor did he deliver such a memo to Mike Mullen. A source told that Haqqani also had an appointment in DC with a doctor for high blood pressure and chest pains that he had been having since last night. Talking to another news channel later, the envoy said that he has got clearance from the doctor and will be leaving for Pakistan in 24 hours.

The US businessman of Pakistani origin Mansoor Ijaz who is at the centre of this controversy told a private news channel on Friday that he was ready to face an inquiry over the memo controversy. Welcoming the calls for the formation of an inquiry commission to investigate the matter, he categorically stated that it was Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani who asked him to “do all of this.”

Ijaz said that although Haqqani had denied writing the letter, he did not say that he wasn’t the architect of the letter not has he denied that he did not conceive the letter. “The day all this happened Haqqani sent me Blackberry messages and asked me call him at his hotel. All sensitive calls were made on land lines and not his cell phone” Ijaz added.

In an exclusive interview with The Cable, Mansoor Ijaz alleged that Husain Haqqani was not only the author of the memo, but the ‘architect’ of the entire plan to overthrow Pakistan's military and intelligence leadership, and was seeking US help.

"Haqqani believed he and the president (Zardari) could redraft the architectural blueprint of how Pakistan should be governed in the future - with civilians in command of the armed forces and intelligence services and the memorandum's content was geared in that direction," Ijaz said.

Special correspondent adds from Washington: 

The memo allegedly authorised by President Asif Ali Zardari pledged to hand over to the United States all remaining al-Qaeda leaders on its soil, as well as Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani, in return for American help in preventing a military coup in Pakistan, according to The Washington Post.

Alternatively, Pakistan could give “US military forces a ‘green light’ to conduct the necessary operations to capture or kill them on Pakistani soil,” said the memo, which the Post said Friday it had obtained. The reported move is thought to have enraged Pakistan’s army, and the resulting controversy prompted Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, to offer his resignation this week.

Against that backdrop, a column published last month in the Financial Times has proved explosive, the Post said. In it, Pakistani American businessman Mansoor Ijaz asserted that a senior Pakistani diplomat whom he has now identified Thursday as Haqqani asked him to help relay a request to Mike Mullen to stop the military from staging a coup.