Haqqani offers resignation over secret memo row

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Hussain Haqqani, has been summoned to Islamabad and has offered to resign over reports that he sought US help against the powerful military, officials said Thursday.

Haqqani, a close aide of President Asif Ali Zardari, has played a key role in helping Pakistan's civilian government navigate turbulent relations with Washington that nosedived over the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 2.

Local media reports implicate him in a memo allegedly sent from Zardari to Admiral Mike Mullen, then America's top military officer, seeking to curtail Pakistan's military.

Zardari reportedly feared that the military might seize power in one way to limit the hugely damaging fallout in Pakistan after Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in May.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Thursday accused the media of hounding Zardari over the memo whose existence was revealed last month by American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, but confirmed that Haqqani would explain his role.

"Yes he (Haqqani) had been summoned by the president," Malik told reporters outside parliament in Islamabad.

"He has already offered his resignation to the president, saying hype has been created and he was ready to resign in the national interest," Malik said.

"If he has done something beyond his mandate, he can come and explain it."

Writing in the Financial Times on October 10, Ijaz said a "senior Pakistani diplomat" telephoned him in May, saying that Zardari wanted to get a message to the White House bypassing Pakistan's military and intelligence chiefs.

"The president feared a military takeover was imminent" and "needed an American fist on his army chief's desk to end any misguided notions of a coup - and fast," said the article published on the opinion pages.

He said a memo was delivered to Mullen on May 10, offering that a "new national security team" would end relations between Pakistani intelligence and the Taliban and its Haqqani faction.

Pakistani Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan confirmed that Haqqani, who has been ambassador in Washington since 2008, had been summoned.

"He has been summoned in the wake of a debate going on about the letter. He will come and explain his position and the leadership will decide if there is any lapse," she told reporters in Islamabad.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011