Former US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen denied this week having ever dealt with Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, who had claimed last month that President Asif Ali Zardari had offered to replace Pakistan’s military and intelligence leadership and cut ties with militant groups in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing in Abbottabad, the Foreign Policy magazine said in a report.
Ijaz also alleged in his op-ed in the Financial Times that Zardari communicated this offer by sending a top secret memo on May 10 through Ijaz himself, to be hand-delivered to Admiral Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a key official managing the US-Pakistan relationship. The report said the details of the memo and the machinations Ijaz described painted a picture of a Zardari government scrambling to save itself from an impending military coup following the raid on bin Laden’s compound, and asking for US support to prevent that coup before it started. Mullen, now retired, denied having ever dealt with Ijaz in comments given to The Cable through his spokesman at the time, Capt John Kirby.“Admiral Mullen does not know Mr Ijaz and has no recollection of receiving any correspondence from him,” Kirby told The Cable. “I cannot say definitively that correspondence did not come from him – the admiral received many missives as chairman from many people every day, some official, some not.
But he does not recall one from this individual. And in any case, he did not take any action with respect to our relationship with Pakistan based on any such correspondence… preferring to work at the relationship directly through (Chief of Army Staff) General (Ashfaq Parvez) Kayani and inside the interagency process,” he added.Mullen’s denial represents the first official US comment on the Ijaz memo, which since October 10 has mushroomed into a huge controversy in Pakistan. Several parts of Pakistan’s civilian government denied that Ijaz’s memorandum ever existed, said the report.
