News
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Kayani cancels UK visit
LONDON: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has canceled a Monday visit to Britain as the US outrage grows over allegations that ISI helped Haqqani network attack American targets in Afghanistan. Britain’s Ministry of Defence said Gen Kayani, who was expected to meet privately with UK Defence Minister Liam Fox, had canceled the visit, declining to speculate on why the visit was scrapped. A Pakistani official said Kayani was staying in Pakistan to hold talks on the crisis sparked by the US accusations against Pakistan’s military-run Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. Last week, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm Mike Mullen, accused the ISI of having backed an Afghan insurgent group in the planning and execution of a September 13 assault on the US embassy in Afghanistan as well as a truck bomb that wounded 77 American soldiers days earlier. Kayani has dismissed the allegations as baseless. But a Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee has said the US should consider military action as an option against Pakistan. Sen Lindsey Graham also said assistance to Pakistan should be reconfigured, and that the US should no longer designate an amount of aid for Pakistan but have a more “transactional relationship” with the country. ap
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk