Pak army denies reports of Pasha's resignation

The Pakistani military has denied reports that Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha is quitting over the debacle of Osama bin Laden being killed by US forces in the garrison city of Abbottabad and that he travelled to Washington to explain Islamabad's position

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Seeking to scotch reports that Pasha may be made the 'fall guy' and asked to quit, the military came out with a brief three-line statement.

"Director General Inter-Services Public Relations Major Generel Athar Abbas has rebutted reports regarding resignation of Director General ISI and his visit to the US," it said.

Media reports had said on Saturday that Pasha, who has come in for criticism for the military intelligence set-up's failure to detect bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad, had gone to Washington to discuss with US officials the episode and its aftermath.

The Daily Beast, a website affiliated to Newsweek magazine, had earlier quoted unnamed officials as saying that the ISI chief "may step down, as the government looks for a fall guy for the bin Laden debacle".

It said Pasha's resignation "was only a matter of time".

An official statement issued on Thursday after a meeting of Corps Commanders chaired by army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said the military admitted its "own shortcomings in developing intelligence on the presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan".

It said that "an investigation has been ordered into the circumstances that led to this situation".

However, there were reports that Pasha had embarked on Friday on a foreign trip to an undisclosed location that was linked to the killing of bin Laden.

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Pakistan's ISI chief may quit

Osama death confirmedPakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha may step down after the debacle over Osama bin Laden, a media report said on Friday.

To assuage both domestic and international anger and dismay over the presence of the Al Qaeda leader in a military cantonment town close to the capital, senior Pakistani officials have told the Daily Beast news website they recognize that an important head has to roll and soon.

They say the most likely candidate to be sacked is Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of the country's spy agency, the ISI directorate.
In a last-ditch effort to control the damage and to assure the US that the ISI was not harboring Osama and was unaware of his presence in Pakistan, Pasha reportedly flew to Washington Friday, the report said.

But the high-level sources who refused to be quoted or named say his resignation is only a matter of time.

Pakistanis are furious that the ISI and the powerful military, which control national security policy, could have been so incompetent as not to know that the Al Qaeda leader was comfortably holed up in Abbottabad, just 120 km north of Islamabad.

However, the report quoted a senior ISI officer as saying: "It's far from routine for someone to resign over failures." "But someone has to resign."

A former ISI officer was more blunt. "It was a great failure of, and an embarrassment to, Pakistani intelligence," he said. "The pressure is mounting for Pasha to resign."

Osama was killed in a US commando operation May 2 in his hideout in Abbottabad near Islamabad.

After the raid, President Barack Obama in a televised address confirmed the Al Qaeda leader's death. Osama's death ended nearly a decade-long manhunt for the US's most wanted terrorist.

Pakistani sources say that Pasha was never keen on the ISI job in the first place. He had no background in intelligence and was an infantry and armour officer in previous commands.

He was, however, very close to Kayani, who insisted he take up the job when he was nominated in 2008.

Pasha's resignation will not affect the US probe of how Osama was able to hide right under the noses of the Pakistani military for so long.

Clearly Washington suspects there must have been some official collusion at the highest level of the Pakistani security forces, the report said. The trove of documents, hard drives and memory sticks that the US Navy Seals removed from bin Laden's residence during the raid could provide some clues to American investigators, it said.