Mullen confirms existence of secret memo

(batkhela.tk) WASHINGTON: Former Chairman US Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Mike Mullen has confirmed receiving memo from Mansoor Ijaz but said he never paid any attention to it and took no follow up, prestigious US publication The Cable reported.

Mansoor Ijaz, US business tycoon alleged in an Oct. 10 op-ed in top UK daily Financial Times that on May 10, in the wake of Osama bin Laden's killing in Abbottabad, Zardari had offered to replace Pakistan's powerful military and intelligence leadership and cut ties with militant groups. Ijaz said he was directed to craft the memo by a senior Pakistani official close to Zardari. Ijaz has implied -- and the Pakistani press has speculated -- that this official was Haqqani.

Kirby told The Cable that Mullen now acknowledges that the Ijaz memo does exist, that he did receive it -- but that he never paid any attention to it and took no follow up action.

"Adm. Mullen had no recollection of the memo and no relationship with Mr. Ijaz. After the original article appeared on Foreign Policy's website, he felt it incumbent upon himself to check his memory. He reached out to others who he believed might have had knowledge of such a memo, and one of them was able to produce a copy of it," Kirby said. "That said, neither the contents of the memo nor the proof of its existence altered or affected in any way the manner in which Adm. Mullen conducted himself in his relationship with Gen. Kayani and the Pakistani government. He did not find it at all credible and took no note of it then or later. Therefore, he addressed it with no one."

Last week, The Cable published an exclusive report on Mullen's comments about the memo. "Adm. Mullen does not know Mr. Ijaz and has no recollection of receiving any correspondence from him," Mullen's spokesman Capt. John Kirby said Nov. 8."I cannot say definitively that correspondence did not come from him -- the admiral received many missives as chairman from many people every day, some official, some not. But he does not recall one from this individual."

Ijaz shot back in an article in Pakistan's The News, in which he published extensive Blackberry Messenger conversations with the Zardari-linked Pakistani official, allegedly Haqqani. He insisted that the memo did, in fact, exist, and that it was delivered from Ijaz to Mullen through another secret go-between, this one a senior US government official.

"There can be no doubt a memorandum was drafted and transmitted to Admiral Mullen with the approval of the highest political level in Pakistan, and that the admiral received it with certainty from a source whom he trusted and who also trusted me," Ijaz wrote.

In an interview late on Wednesday afternoon, Washington time, Haqqani confirmed to The Cable that he will travel to Islamabad and has sent a letter to Zardari offering his resignation.

"At no point was I asked by you or anyone in the Pakistani government to draft a memo and at no point did I draft or deliver such a memo," Haqqani said that he had written in his letter to Zardari.

"I've been consistently vilified as being against the Pakistani military even though I have only opposed military intervention in political affairs," Haqqani said that he wrote. "It's not easy to operate under the shadow of innuendo and I have not been named by anyone so far, but I am offering to resign in the national interest and leave that to the will of the president."

Haqqani declined to comment to The Cable whether or not he played any role in the controversy surrounding the memo -- for example, discussing it with Ijaz before or after the fact, as the scandal deepened. It's widely rumored that Haqqani and Ijaz have known each other for many years.