A certain section of the Pakistani intelligentsia has termed the 'American-Indian-Israeli nexus' as a figment of the imagination of the rightwing and has rejected the argument of involvement of a 'foreign hand' in the recent wave of bomb blasts that have rocked the Pakistani state. In fact, they go as far as terming the argument as an explanation contrived to satisfy the conservative/ultra-nationalist mindset that refuses to accept the ground realities. A case in point is the Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's explicit statement accusing India of abetting the insurgency in NWFP. Assuming the Makhdoom from Multan has not had a spiritual revelation, this sort of a statement from a 'secular' PPP stalwart, who also happens to represent the Pakistani government at present, should effectively allay the 'right-wing conspiracy theory'. This is as far as the Indian factor is concerned. As for the Americans, we know for a fact about the desperate American desire that Pakistan should continue its military operation against the militants. The criticality of such operations to the US was highlighted by the visit of President Obama's National Security Advisor, General James Jones, to Pakistan. Jones openly linked the success of US military in Afghanistan to the military operations in Pakistan. With increasing US military footprint in Pakistan and the history of US disregard for human rights and international law, it is not going too far to suggest that the US is fomenting trouble in Pakistan to turn the public opinion in favor of the military operations. In fact, US has been known to use its resources to influence public opinion in the various 'color revolutions' in the Central Asia and regime changes in Central America. -MOEZ MOBEEN, Islamabad, November 25.