Well informed sources told Business Recorder that Ambassador Haqqani faced some hard questions in relation to the controversial memo from the top military leadership in the presence of political leadership, including Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani at the Prime Minister's House. The military leadership, the sources said, rejected most of the arguments that Haqqani advanced in his defence.
Presidential spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, meanwhile, told media that there was no such meeting in the Presidency. The sources said that the Prime Minister has accepted the resignation of Hussain Haqqani from ambassadorship. He served as Pakistan Ambassador to the US for three-and-half years. The sources said that Secretary Foreign Affairs Salman Bashir is likely to be his successor.
Haqqani had been a guest several times on several US broadcasts. In July, according to NPR, he told All Things Considered host Robert Siegel that: "Pakistan and the United States have a complex, multidimensional relationship. Both countries need each other. Occasionally there are differences between the best of allies. We've seen that through history: France and the United States had problems, Britain and the United States did not always agree on the conduct of the Second World War. "So I think what we see is basically a difficult, complex relationship playing out in an age of media glare. But what comes in the media glare is not always what happens in private between us as allies."
Agencies add: The affair has highlighted the divide between Pakistan's weak civilian government and the military, as well as the role the United States plays in the affairs of the country. After the allegations were made last week, Haqqani was summoned to Islamabad to meet the army and intelligence chiefs. He told The Associated Press, "I have resigned my services as ambassador and am happy to face an inquiry." Haqqani said on his Twitter account he had sent his resignation to the prime minister. State television said his resignation had been accepted. A spokesman for the prime minister's office said Haqqani was asked to resign.
Businessman Mansoor Ijaz, writing in a column in the Financial Times on October 10, said a senior Pakistani diplomat had asked that a memo be delivered to the Pentagon with a plea for US help to stave off a military coup in the days after the May 2 US raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Ijaz later identified the diplomat as Haqqani.
No evidence has emerged that the military was plotting a coup and the Pentagon at the time dismissed the memo as not credible. Haqqani denies involvement in the memo. (http://r.reuters.com/wes25s) "I still maintain that I did not conceive, write or distribute the memo," Haqqani told Reuters shortly after he resigned. "This is not about the memo," he continued. "This is about bigger things."
He declined to comment further. Haqqani's resignation follows a meeting with Pakistan President Asif Zardari, army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and ISI chief Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha. Haqqani is a former journalist who covered Afghanistan's civil war and later wrote a book on the role of radical Islam and the military in Pakistan.
With his crisp suits and colourful turns of phrase, he has developed close ties with Washington's top power brokers as Pakistan's envoy since 2008. In the past year he has sought to ease tempers in both capitals and find common ground during an extraordinarily tense period in US-Pakistani relations that included the bin Laden raid, the jailing of a CIA contractor, and US accusations that Pakistan backed a militant attack on the US embassy in Kabul. He is close to Zardari but estranged from Pakistan's military.
Tensions between Pakistan's civilian government and military have bedevilled the nuclear-armed South Asian country for almost its entire existence, with the military ruling the country for more than half of its 64-year history after a series of coups.
Haqqani's resignation was seen by many analysts as further weakening the civilian government, which is already beset by allegations of corruption and incompetence. "They (the military) may expect much more from the government, much more beyond the resignation of Hussain Haqqani, because they see that everybody perceived to be involved in this affair will be seen as anti-military and by implication anti-state," said Imtiaz Gul, a security analyst in Islamabad.
Vali Nasr, a former senior State Department official who worked on Pakistan, said the crux of the affair was not Haqqani's role but whether Zardari would come to be seen as having directed the memo, which would imply that the president had gone outside Pakistan to request urgent assistance against his own military.
"At what point would the issue escalate to Haqqani was acting on Zardari's behest? That would really create massive tension between the military and Zardari." Nasr said the issue would be unlikely to have a major impact on the already strained US-Pakistan relationship unless it seriously weakened or toppled the civilian government.
Ijaz initially said he believed Haqqani was acting under the authority of Zardari, but later said he was not sure how involved Zardari was in the affair. Mark Siegel, a lobbyist who represents the Pakistani government in Washington, said Zardari called him when the Financial Times story appeared, asking his law firm to initiate libel proceedings against the newspaper and against Ijaz.
Siegel advised Zardari against filing a case because he judged it difficult for a public figure to win a libel case in a US court. "He was irate and said the memo was a total fabrication," Siegel said. Siegel, who has known Zardari for 25 years, said he was absolutely certain that Zardari had known nothing about the memo.