| Paks breach trust. Boy howdy, that caught me by complete surprise. |
WASHINGTON: Amid bitter, recriminatory exchanges between the United States and Pakistan over the Osama bin Laden extermination, planned bilateral visits of President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington DC and a return trip of President Barack Obama to Islamabad are both in jeopardy. Ties between the two sides are expected to slide further following Pakistan's "outing" of the CIA station chief in Islamabad on Saturday.
In a sign of how bad ties are between the two countries, Pakistani media on Saturday once again publicly named the CIA station chief in Islamabad, a breach of both protocol and trust, that is bound to enrage Washington.
A Pakistani TV channel and a newspaper considered mouthpieces of the country's military said the ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha had met CIA station chief Mark Carlton to protest US incursion into Abbottabad to kill al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. CIA station chiefs remain anonymous and unnamed in public although the host government is told.
| If we had a CIA worth anything at all, Mr. Pasha would shortly have an automobile accident for having done this... |
Earlier, the Obama administration had asked Pakistan to disclose names of its top intelligence operatives to determine whether they had contact with Osama or his agents.
| That's rather clueless of Bambi. No intel agency gives that information away. |
The latest breach indicates that a section of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment is determined to run the CIA out of the country fearing that the ISI's links with terror groups and its sheltering of terrorist leaders will be exposed.
| They wanted us out of the country before that. Out with the CIA, the transport trucks to Afghanistan, the Predator drones, all the infidels. They'll let us leave our money. |
Zardari has been waiting to come to US practically every week for several months now, with Hussain Haqqani, his ambassador in Washington, doing the spadework for the visit. The visit was first slated for March and then pushed to May as ties headed south after the Raymond Davis episode.
| Makes you wonder whether Mr. Davis had been to Abbottabad... |
Obama meanwhile had promised to visit Pakistan when the White House announced his India trip, in part to assuage Islamabad's wounded pride at being left out. No dates were announced but it was expected sometime later this year. But Pakistan's furious reaction to the wide-spread belief that it sheltered Osama has for now wrecked both trips. There is also growing realization in Washington that the military junta fully controls Pakistan and it rather pointless to publicly engage a weak civilian government that cannot deliver on promises.
| If we promise not to visit Pakistain until it has a strong government that controls the military and ISI, Misha will be president... |
The disclosure that the CIA established a safehouse in Abbottabad within sighting distance of the Osama's compound under the ISI's nose had also rattled the military brass.
| It does rather raise the issue of basic competence within the ISI... |
And in a further embarrassment for the ISI, it now transpires that Osama lived in village just off the town of Haripur on the Abbottabad Highway for 2-1/2 years before he moved into the new compound. That would make it at least 7-1/2 years that he lived close to urban settlements. |