Zero involvement of Hafiz,says sacked Pakistan NSA

Guiding principle for resolution of Kashmir dispute should be based on spirit of Kashmir for the Kashmiris....

Countering Home Minister P Chidambarams declaration of India having shared ample evidence with Pakistan to prove Lashkar-e-Toiba founder Hafiz Saeeds involvement in the 26/11 attack,Mahmud Ali Durrani,the former National Security Advisor of Pakistan,on Saturday said there was zero proof of involvement of Hafiz Saeed in the carnage.

In India at the invitation of the Observer Research Foundation,Durrani met former foreign secretary Shivshanker Menon and will be meeting National Security Advisor M K Narayanan on September 8. Meetings with Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao,Special Secretary international political organisations Vivek Katju and Joint Secretary Pakistan T C A Raghavan are also being worked out. He will also meet former NSA Brajesh Mishra.

Delivering the first R K Mishra memorial lecture in New Delhi on Saturday,Durrani said,Today there is a firm belief amongst the intelligence and security community in Pakistan that India is actively supporting insurgency in Balochistan and some even believe that India has a hand in the turbulence in FATA. Later,when asked if Pakistan has shared evidence with India,he said,humney diya hai we have given it.

Durrani was removed as NSA in January this year for being the first in the Pakistan establishment to openly admit in public that Ajmal Amir Kasab was a Pakistani national. The former Pak NSA,who was also known as General Shanti peace for being involved in Indo-Pak Track-II diplomacy,made a strong pitch for restarting the dialogue process which has been stalled ever since Mumbai terror attacks.

At the cost of repetition I will re-emphasise dialogue; without dialogue the relationship comes to a standstill. I am sure there are more effective ways to express displeasure rather than break dialogue. For the credibility of the dialogue process it is important to achieve meaningful progress. A dialogue should not turn into a game between the bright boys of the Foreign Service,to score minor diplomatic victories and lose the war of peace. Here again the driving force behind the formal dialogue process has to be the political leadership. Give space to the suffering Kashmiris. Guiding principle for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute should be based on the spirit of Kashmir for the Kashmiris, he said.

He also proposed that chiefs of our primary intelligence agencies need to have periodic meetings to bridge their differences and cooperate on counterterrorism. He said the visa process should be simplified and the practices of police reporting and city specific visas done away with and both countries should allow airing of each others TV programmes. The Sir Creek and Siachen issues are ripe for resolution,let us put them behind us. We should set up a Joint Glacial Research Centre in Siachen, he said.