News
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Pakistan threatens CIA with new restrictions
* Pasha makes clear that CIA-ISI relationship has suffered a ‘breach of trust’ and has to be reconfigured with a ‘clear code of conduct’
* US officials says CIA is considering Pakistan’s request for more information but sees other demands as nonstarters
Daily Times Monitor
LAHORE: Pakistani officials threatened on Monday to impose new limits on the CIA drone strikes in their country and to expel agency operatives whose missions are not approved by Islamabad, US and Pakistani officials said.
According to the Washington Post, the demands, which were conveyed as top spies from the two countries met at CIA headquarters in Virginia, represent an effort by Pakistan to exert more control over the covert CIA war being waged inside its borders.
Pakistani officials have expressed mounting frustration with the accelerated pace of the CIA’s Predator air campaign and the expanded presence of agency operatives.
The frictions were the focus of a meeting on Monday between CIA Director Leon Panetta and the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Lt General Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
A senior Pakistani official called the tone of the meeting ‘cordial’ but said Pasha made clear that the CIA-ISI relationship had suffered a ‘breach of trust’ and had to be reconfigured with a ‘clear code of conduct’.
“We need to know who is in Pakistan doing what, and that the CIA won’t go behind our back,” said the official. “There has to be a greater sharing of information in terms of what the CIA wants and is doing. They have to stop mistrusting the ISI as much as they do you can’t have us as your ally and treat us as your adversary at the same time.”
Pasha asked the CIA for a complete list of its employees and contractors in Pakistan and made clear that some may be asked to leave, the official said.
CIA officials sought to play down the disagreement and signalled that joint counterterrorism operations would continue.
“Director Panetta and General Pasha held productive discussions today, and the CIA-ISI relationship remains on solid footing,” agency spokesman George Little said. “Today’s exchange emphasised the need to continue to work closely together, including on our common fight against terrorist networks that threaten both countries.”
Even so, US officials acknowledged that Pasha pushed to restructure the relationship and to impose new requirements on the CIA.
“The Pakistanis have asked for more visibility into some things, and that request is being talked about,” a US official said.
But Pakistani officials signaled on Monday that the dynamic could change because of a perception in Islamabad that the CIA has overstepped.
Perhaps most worrisome for the US officials is the threat of new limits on the drone campaign. The CIA carried out 118 drone strikes in Pakistan last year, more than in all the previous years of the programme combined, according to independent estimates.
Pakistani officials said they planned to press the CIA to restore the rules that were in place at the beginning of the programme, when strikes were intermittent and the agency typically gave notice to - or sought permission from - the Pakistani government before a missile was launched.
More recently, Pakistani officials have expressed alarm over the scope of the CIA’s presence inside their country, as well as an alleged expansion of agency operations aimed at gathering intelligence on Pakistan’s nuclear programme and militant groups with links to the ISI.
The CIA is considering greater coordination and information sharing to help restore a once-promising relationship with Pakistan’s intelligence agency that was badly damaged when a CIA security contractor shot two Pakistanis dead in Lahore in January, US officials said on Monday.
The US spy agency is considering Pakistan’s request for more information but sees other demands as nonstarters, according to one US official briefed on the talks. The Pakistani request for more visibility is being discussed, the official said. After the meeting between Panetta and Pasha, CIA spokesman George Little said, “The CIA-ISI relationship remains on sound footing.”
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk