ISLAMABAD - KASWAR KLASRA - Country’s former Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani has once again rejected Mansoor Ijaz’s claims, saying he never asked the US businessman to pass on any memorandum to American officials. “I have submitted a summary of events to the judicial commission. However, I am yet to submit a detailed reply,” Haqqani told TheNation on Wednesday.
In the summary he submitted to the commission, he rejected all allegations levelled against him by Mansoor Ijaz. However, he said he has been in contact with large number of people through Blackberry messages and electronic messages.
“As a Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, I, Husain Haqqani, maintained telephone, text and BBM contacts with a large number of people including members of Congress, media personalities, officials and former officials in both Pakistan and the United States, family members, friends and former students. This included several individuals who were critical of Pakistan and Pakistani policies. Mr Ijaz was one such individual, peripheral in importance and significance,” Haqqani told the judicial commission.
He added that the sheer volume of his electronic correspondence made it impossible for him to recall every message. “Indeed, I did not have time to respond to everyone. It was my practice to delete text and BBM messages frequently and I never maintained back-up files or records of chat or messenger conversations.“
Haqqani further stated that the documents presented before the commission by Ijaz were baseless. Ijaz’s version of events was certainly bogus, and he deliberately wanted to push the US and Pakistan toward a dangerous confrontation, he added. Interestingly, in the rejoinder, Haqqani confessed to having meeting with Ijaz and a telephonic conversation in November 2011.
Earlier on February 21, 2012, Mansoor Ijaz, while recording his explosive statement via video link from London before the commission, claimed that he has been in contact with the highest and the mightiest of country and that he was asked to write the mischievous memo.
Ijaz also presented the stock of ‘evidence’ in his possession to back his claims to Commission Secretary Raja Jawad Abbas, who was present at the London High Commission.
Ijaz had already handed over a 29-page testimony, his Blackberry, PIN, phone numbers, emails, code words, documents and other ‘key’ information in connection with writing of the memo and its delivery to US Admiral Mike Mullen through Gen James Jones. Ijaz said that contacts between Mr Haqqani and him started in May, 2011. He noted that Mr Haqqani sent him a message inviting him for coffee or dinner, saying he (Haqqani) had come to London for 26 hours.
According to Ijaz’s testimony, Haqqani told him that Pakistan Army was putting pressure on President Asif Ali Zardari and wanted to topple his government. Ijaz said he had noted that Mr Haqqani seemed panicked during his talk.
Mansoor Ijaz told the commission that Mr Haqqani had told him President of Pakistan wanted to establish a security team and Gen (r) Gehangir Karamat and Gen (r) Mehmood Durrani would be part of that team. Mr Haqqani also said that if US helped government to remove Gen Kayani, US could chose its own people to be included in Abbottabad commission that was to probe US raid killing Osama bin Laden.
Commenting on statement of Mansoor Ijaz, analyst said that Ijaz made it clear on Wednesday that the only alleged link between Haqqani and the memo are handwritten notes made by Ijaz himself of a telephone call. None of the text messages and BBMs included in the affidavit directly refers to the memo. Most of the BBMs are timed and dated well after the delivery of the controversial memo to James Jones, according to the time on the email sent by Ijaz to Jones.
An overwhelming majority of the BBMs are from Ijaz to Haqqani, which shows that he may have been creating a trail of BBMs to be used later to create circumstantial evidence. There is no BBM or email from Haqqani to Ijaz written before the writing and sending of the memo on May 9, 2011 that asks Ijaz to write and send the memo if indeed the memo was Mr Haqqani’s idea.
Although Mansoor Ijaz claims that Mr Haqqani asked him to call him by sending a BBM message when Haqqani arrived in London on May 9, most phone calls and BBM messages and all emails are from Mansoor Ijaz to Haqqani. According to the communications log provided in the witness statement, Haqqani only made two short phone calls of less than 2 minutes each to Ijaz, which support Haqqani’s version that he kept in touch with Mansoor Ijaz as a courtesy. From the flow of communications it seems Ijaz is the one who was eager to communicate with Haqqani. The alleged transcripts of text messages and BBM conversations establish communication between Haqqani and Ijaz but do not shed any light on the memo. Ijaz accepts in his statement that he drafted the memo albeit with “content originating from phone conversation with Haqqani”.
Husain Haqqani has denied telling Ijaz to write or deliver the memo or giving him the contents of the memo.