New Delhi: Former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lieutenant General (retired) Hamid Gul on Monday rubbished all reports that say that Islamabad has agreed to arrest him and hand him over to India.
Gul was reacting to a Washington Post report that claimed Pakistan has agreed to a 48-hour timetable set by India and US to take action against Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and arrest at least three Pakistanis.
He has accused the US of starting a disinformation campaign against him for condemning the US.
Gul also warned India calling the US deceitful, saying the Indian public and leadership should beware of the US which is using it for its own purposes.
But on the subject of the involvement of elements from Pakistan in Mumbai terror attack, Gul demanded hard evidence.
“Pakistan government has clearly enunciated, we will punish the guilty and take them to task. But so far no bodies (of the slain terrorists) or faces have been shown. The arrested man (Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab) hasn’t been brought in front of the cameras. Evidence has to be there. One cannot start taking action on the basis of accusations alone otherwise there’s a risk of unleashing historical changes in Indo-Pak relations. There could be a watershed in the relation btw India and Pakistan,” Gul said.
Gul also said that India has a habit of blaming Pakistan’s ISI for attacks that are actually insider jobs.
“One knows that Samjhauta was another case in which Pakistan’s ISI was accused but it turned out to be the job of militant Hindus themselves who had killed 68 passengers in their train and that it was an inside job,” he said.
He also claimed that al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was not behind the September 11 attack on the World Trade Towers in the US.
“Mullah Omar also said that we did not believe that Osama had carried out the attack. So that’s still a mystery and it needs to be resolved. Americans have still to set up a proper enquiry commission into this. It’s very important that (president-elect) Barack Obama would do well to set up an enquiry commission into this,” he demanded.
Gul said he had no contacts with the Pakistani Taliban and its leadership or with militant commander Sirajuddin Haqqani. He also said he was not in any way involved in recruiting youth from madrassas to fight in Afghanistan.
His remarks came after reports that the US plans to send names of four Pakistanis, including that of him and other former ISI officials, as also Pakistan-based groups to the UN Security Council for imposing sanctions against them for alleged links to terrorist activities.
“I have met the Foreign Minister (Shah Mahmood Qureshi) and asked him to protect innocent citizens like me. He said he would take it up,” Gul was quoted as saying by PTI.
The inclusion of Gul and others on the UN list would lead to freezing of their assets. The News recently reported it had accessed a secret US document that listed charges against Gul.
Gul, who served as ISI chief during 1987-89, said the charges that the US was bringing against him “are all lies”.
He said he had no contacts with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and his links to leaders in Afghanistan were “purely moral and academic”.
(With inputs from PTI)
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