Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington returned to Islamabad Sunday to explain himself over claims that he wrote a letter seeking US help against the country’s powerful military.

Hussain Haqqani, a close aide of President Asif Ali Zardari, has played a key role in helping Pakistan’s civilian government navigate turbulent relations with Washington that nosedived over the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Local media reports implicated Haqqani in a memo allegedly sent from Zardari to Admiral Mike Mullen, then America’s top military officer, seeking to curtail Pakistan’s military shortly after it was humiliated by the bin Laden killing.

Zardari reportedly feared that the military might seize power in a bid to limit the hugely damaging fallout in Pakistan after Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2.

The alleged memo, released last month by American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, said that a “new national security team” in Pakistan — with US support — could end ties between Pakistani intelligence and Islamist militants.

A senior government official told AFP that Haqqani “arrived early Sunday and is due to attend several meetings including a meeting with the President to explain the situation”.

Haqqani has offered to resign over the row, but has denied any involvement with the document.

Pakistan’s opposition leader Nawaz Sharif on Saturday demanded an independent commission to investigate the issue.

Pakistan's US envoy returns home amid scandal
Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. says he has returned home to answer questions about his alleged involvement in a secret memo scandal that threatens his job.

Ambassador Husain Haqqani says he arrived in Islamabad on Sunday.

A U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin, Mansoor Ijaz, has accused Haqqani of masterminding a memo sent to a senior U.S. military official asking for help to rein in the Pakistani military after the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden inPakistan in May.

Haqqani has denied the allegation that he was behind the memo but has offered to resign to end the controversy.

The scandal has exacerbated tensions between Pakistan's weak civilian government and its powerful military.

Pakistan memo puts pressure on Zardari

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Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, is facing pressure from his opponents over allegations that he sought to strike a deal with the US to help him assert control over the country’s powerful military.

Pakistan’s political scene has been hit by a claim that Mr Zardari authorised his ambassador to Washington to approach a top US official for help in preventing a coup in the tense days after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May.

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The controversy erupted on October 10, when Mansoor Ijaz, a US businessman of Pakistani origin, wrote an article in the Financial Times claiming he had served as a conduit for a memorandum setting out Mr Zardari’s plea for US backing in a showdown with the military.

Pakistan’s government had dismissed Mr Ijaz’s claims as a “fantasy” and his account was initially met with scepticism in much of Pakistan’s boisterous media.

But the affair roared back into life this week when Admiral Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, confirmed he had received a memo of the kind described by Mr Ijaz, although he did not find it credible.

That revelation has sparked a fresh political storm in Pakistan, where Mr Zardari’s critics have demanded the government provide a full account of where the memo originated, who authorised it, and what it was designed to achieve.

“The government needs to come clean over whether President Zardari was somehow involved in this memo,” said Khurram Dastgir Khan, one of several opposition lawmakers to raise similar questions in the National Assembly on Thursday.

“Shenanigans like this are not the way to conduct foreign policy.”

The affair, dubbed “Memogate” by one columnist, has provided a glimpse into a determined but usually opaque power struggle between civilian officials and the generals who still wield enormous hidden influence after decades of army rule.

Analysts say Mr Zardari runs the risk that his enemies will seek to portray the memo as evidence that his government was contemplating an act bordering on treason by asking the US – which many Pakistanis regard as hostile – to rein in the army, which has spent decades cultivating an image as a guarantor of the country’s integrity.

Mr Ijaz, a venture capitalist, initially wrote in the FT that he had served as an informal conduit to deliver the memo to Adm Mullen a week after Bin Laden’s death on May 2. Mr Zardari, he wrote, felt he needed “an American fist” on the desk of General Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan’s army chief, to prevent any risk of a coup following the Bin Laden raid, which humiliated the army.

In return for US support, the government offered to stop Pakistan’s intelligence agencies backing militants fighting Nato in Afghanistan, according to Mr Ijaz. To do this Mr Zardari would sack key generals and introduce a civilian-led security team.

Mr Ijaz told the FT on Thursday that he had been asked to deliver the message by Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, and an ally of Mr Zardari.

“Husain Haqqani, whom I have known for over 10 years, was indeed the senior Pakistani diplomat who asked me to assist him in privately delivering his message to Admiral Mike Mullen,” Mr Ijaz said. He also detailed phone and email contact between himself and Mr Haqqani in May as they finalised the draft of the memorandum and awaited “the boss’s approval”. “The boss was an obvious reference to President Zardari,” Mr Ijaz said.

Mr Haqqani, who has emerged as an influence in the fraught US-Pakistan alliance since taking his post in 2008, has denied any involvement.

But he has been recalled to Islamabad to explain his position. On Thursday, he told the FT he was prepared to resign if doing so would defuse the controversy and lashed out at Mr Ijaz.

“The back and forth and media manipulation involving the businessman who started this controversy with his op-ed [article] has been exploited by opponents of Pakistani democracy to drive a wedge between our civil and military leaders,” Mr Haqqani said. “The individual who started this controversy with his op-ed might consider his ego more important than Pakistan; I do not.”

Pakistani officials made no comment on Thursday on whether Mr Haqqani’s offer to resign had been accepted and he remained in Washington.

The furore is being watched in Washington where the US is torn by its historic reliance on cultivating strong ties with the military, Pakistan's most powerful institution, while also hoping to foster greater democracy and bolster the prospects for long-term stability.

However, those hopes are complicated by the weakness of Mr Zardari's
administration, which has been hobbled by an entrenched legacy of corruption and the triumph of personality politics over institutions.

The storm over Memogate has also pumped up an already feverish political climate with a roster of the country’s best known diplomats, spymasters and politicians using the affair to push their competing agendas ahead of elections due in early 2013.

Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier who writes on security issues, said the military was pressing the government to sack Mr Haqqani. “The question is how much pressure there will be on Zardari, and what that pressure will get him to do,” he said.

The controversy flared on Wednesday when Adm Mullen revised an earlier claim that he could not recall receiving the memo and confirmed it had been sent to his office. Adm Mullen said through a spokesman that he had not believed the memo’s contents were credible.