Pakistan reverses decision to send intelligence chief to India

Nov 29, 2008, 8:35 GMT

Islamabad - Pakistan decided to reverse a decision to send its spy chief to India, a move that can damage efforts to dampen growing tensions between the two countries over terrorist attacks in Mumbai, a government official said on Saturday.

Zahid Bashir, a spokesman of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, said a representative of Inter-Services Intelligence instead of its Director General Lieutenant-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha would be dispatched to New Delhi to cooperate with the probe into the Mumbai carnage.

India has suspected some elements in Pakistan, mainly Islamic militant organization Lashkar-e-Toiba, to be behind the gun and bomb attacks in Mumbai where nearly 200 people were killed and over 300 injured.

Gilani denied the allegations and as a goodwill gesture promised on Friday to send the intelligence chief to India on the request of his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh.

His spokesman did not give any reason for the reversal, but the initial decision to send Pash to India came under heavy criticism from the Pakistani public as well as the opposition parties.

Some callers to late night TV shows described it as 'surrender' to India.

Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the second largest party in the parliament, said the announcement was made without appropriate deliberations and consultations.

The chief of largest Islamic party Jamaat Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, condemned the decision. 'It is like accepting the supremacy of our traditional rival,' he told Urdu-language Jung newspaper, and demanded the government cancel the trip.

Pakistan and India have fought three wars during their 61 years of existence and was on the verge of fourth in 2002.

But the tensions between them have lessened since they launched a peace dialogue in 2004 to resolve differences on a number of issues, including Kashmir, the Himalayan region over which the both lay claim.

The two countries nevertheless suffer from mutual distrust and the peace process stalls for months after almost every major terrorist attack in India by Islamic militants, which oppose reconciliation between Islamabad and New Delhi.