Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directly told his Pakistani counterpart on Friday that some Pakistani elements had sent the weapons used in the Mumbai terrorist attacks from Karachi and to sort this out, the ISI chief should immediately rush to India.
Talking to The News in his office at the Prime Minister House, Yousuf Raza Gilani narrated the whole story of how the Indian prime minister had actually made this request during their telephone talk.
The ISI director-general will be sent to India in the light of the two-year-old agreement between the two countries inked during the regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf, which requires a country to seek help of the other or use information and intelligence in their war on terrorism.
Gilani said he was desperately trying to contact the Indian prime minister for the last two days to offer his condolences over the tragic events in which innocent lives were lost.Gilani said he was very keen to contact the Indian prime minister for the reason that Singh was the first world leader to make a telephone call after the Marriott bombing in Islamabad in September. “I wanted to reciprocate the gesture of the Indian prime minister to be the first to call him during the testing times for the Indian government and its people,” Gilani said.
But he could not talk to Singh as he was not available. Finally, when Gilani got through on Friday, he condemned terrorism on the Indian soil in which over 100 innocent lives were lost.Gilani said during their conversation, at one stage, the Indian prime minister disclosed that the preliminary report into the attack had given clues about the involvement of certain elements present in Karachi who had shipped weapons to India.
The political government in Islamabad decided quickly to rush the ISI director-general, Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to help the Indian intelligence agencies following an intensive round of consultations between the president, the prime minister and the Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani.
ISPR Director-General Maj-Gen Athar Abbas, when contacted for comments on Friday night, he said no orders had been received by the Army and unless written orders were received giving details of the purpose of the visit, he could not make any comment. Yet it was thought to be a formality as the Army chief had given his consent.
After Gilani talked to Gen Ashfaq Kayani, the Army chief, too, consulted his own uniformed aides before agreeing with Gilani and President Asif Zardari that Pakistan should oblige the Indian prime minister in a bid to clear the deepening mistrust between the two countries.
This is first time that the Indians have claimed to have evidence about the involvement of some elements in Pakistan and have asked the ISI director-general to help the investigations. The extraordinary request of the Indian prime minister caught Prime Minister Gilani, President Asif Zardari and even the Army Chief General Kayani off guard as none of them knew how to react to the shocking request.
As narrated by Gilani, he first talked to Gen Kayani and then rushed to the presidency to brief Zardari where both the leaders discussed the Indian request in detail.Both kept on waiting for the response of the Army chief as they knew that this was not an ordinary decision and only the military high command was in a position to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. However, both the leaders were in favour of sending the ISI director-general so that no one should point any finger at Pakistan.
This argument was also given by Gilani at his news conference in Lahore when he told the media Pakistan had nothing to hide as “we are not involved in any way”. In his telephone talk with Gilani, Singh was of the view that both the intelligence agencies might exchange information and then evaluate it to find out culprits behind this terrorist attack.