NOT INDISPENSIBLE

No one, including the Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director General Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, is indispensable for Pakistan, Defence Minister Ahmed Mukthar said on Wednesday, as he admitted that there was considerable reduction in trust between the US and Pakistan and Washington had been told to vacate the Shamsi Airbase, which is reportedly used for drone attacks in tribal areas.
“The ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) director general presented himself for accountability before parliament and offered to resign, but the parliamentarians expressed confidence in him and barred from doing so,” Mukhtar told journalists at his office, but hastened to add that “nobody is indispensable”. Answering a question pertaining to any change in the military leadership, Mukhtar said there was no possibility of such a change in the backdrop of the Abbottabad incident. Mukhtar’s disclosure that the US was operating Shamsi airbase, however, contradicts a statement made by Air Chief Rao Qamar Suleman in an in-camera session of the parliament
on May 12 that the airbase was under the control of United Arab Emirates. “We have told the US to leave the airbase,” Mukhtar said. “The trust between the US and Pakistan has decreased to a great deal and this trust deficit could be reduced by sitting together and taking joint actions,” he added.
A US embassy spokeswoman told AFP there were no US military personnel at the Shamsi base. Reports said operations at the base, which Washington has not publicly acknowledged, were conducted with tacit Pakistani military consent.
DEFENCE STRATEGY: A candid Mukhtar also told reporters there was a need to change Pakistan eastern border-specific defence strategy. “The entire world has changed after 9/11, so there is a need to change our defence strategy, which has remained eastern border-specific for many decades,” he said.
Talking about the impact of the war against terror, the minister said the Coalition Support Fund had stopped funds for the war on terror being fought by Pakistan in its tribal regions and “now Pakistan was facing the cost of the war”.
When asked about the presence of Mullah Omar in Pakistan, the defence minister said that he was not in Pakistan.
“Even if he was in Pakistan he would have left the country after the Abbottabad incident,” he said. When questioned about negotiations with the Taliban, Mukhtar favoured talks to find a solution to the problem. “The time has come to sit together with serious people on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border,” he said.