ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani Supreme Court commission has concluded that Husain Haqqani, the country’s former envoy to Washington, wrote a memo which sought US help in reining in the military, findings that could re-ignite tensions between generals and the civilian leadership.
The commission’s conclusions were released yesterday during a deep crisis in relations between Islamabad and Washington.
Pakistan’s generals, who have ruled the country for more than half of its 64-year history, were furious after the memo surfaced last year.
Writing in a column in the Financial Times on Oct. 10, Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz said a senior Pakistani diplomat had asked that a memo be delivered to the Pentagon with a plea for US help to stave off a feared military coup in the days after the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.
Ijaz later identified the diplomat as Haqqani, a close ally of President Asif Ali Zardari.
Haqqani denies any involvement in the scandal, dubbed “Memogate” in the media, but resigned over the matter.
The commission said that Haqqani had committed “acts of disloyalty” by seeking foreign intervention in Pakistan’s affairs.
Haqqani, a member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, could be charged with treason if the Supreme Court opens a case against him based on the commission’s findings.
“It has been incontrovertibly established that the memorandum was authentic and Mr. Haqqani was the originator and architect,” the commission’s report said, according to a statement by the Supreme Court.
No evidence has emerged that the military was plotting a coup and the Pentagon at the time dismissed the memo as not credible.
But the scandal plunged relations between Pakistan’s civilian leaders and its military to their lowest point since a coup in 1999, and threatened further instability in the insurgency-hit, nuclear-armed country.
The commission’s conclusions on Haqqani’s role in the memogate could add to troubles between Pakistan and the United states and Pakistan.
Ties between the strategic allies deteriorated sharply after the unilateral raid that killed Bin Laden, which humiliated Pakistan’s military and exposed it to rare public criticism.
The United States said on Monday it was withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan without securing a long-sought deal on supply routes for the war in neighboring Afghanistan, publicly exposing a diplomatic stalemate.
A senior US government official told Reuters on Tuesday that Pakistan’s civilian government should “bite the bullet” and re-open the routes in order to ease tensions with Washington.
The Supreme Court set up the commission to investigate the memo following several petitions, including one from the country’s main opposition party.
Ijaz was scheduled to testify before the commission in January, but he did not come to Pakistan because of security fears.
“The findings confirm what I said was the truth from Day 1 of this investigation,” Ijaz said in a statement yesterday.
“I said at the outset of this investigation that rogue operations in governments have no place in our world today. The people of Pakistan deserve better.”
Haqqani dismissed the commission’s findings and said his lawyers would challenge them.
“The commission’s report has been released to distract attention from other more embarrassing developments,” Haqqani said in a statement. He added the investigation had been ideologically driven and “had little to do with fact finding.”
The Supreme Court on Tuesday also held a preliminary hearing in another high-profile scandal, this one involving Pakistan’s best-known real estate developer and the chief justice’s son. The businessman says the justice’s son took money from him in exchange for seeking to influence judicial cases involving the developer’s companies.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry is seen as a powerful figure willing to challenge the government and military over everything from corruption to alleged kidnappings and torture by the military and intelligence agencies.
His son, Arsalan Iftikhar, denies any wrongdoing.
FROM: REUTERS
Former envoy originator and architect of Memogate: Supreme Court panel
