ISLAMABAD: CIA Director Leon Panetta met over dinner Friday with Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani and Director-General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Ahmed Shuja Pasha for talks on how to repair ties between the two countries that were fractured by the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a Pakistani and a US official said.
Sources told DawnNews that the talks focused on intelligence cooperation between the US and Pakistan.
The military leadership also apprised Panetta that Pakistan would not accept unilateral American operations inside Pakistan, sources said.
The subject of reconciliation with the Afghan Taliban was also discussed during the meeting.
Panetta’s visit was his first to Pakistan since the unilateral American operation on May 2 killed the al Qaeda leader in a Pakistani garrison town. It is likely to be his last before he becomes the next US defence secretary.
American officials have said they want to rebuild a relationship vital to their fight against al Qaeda and their efforts to wind down the war in Afghanistan, but progress has been slow amid suspicions by some in Washington that elements within the security establishment here were sheltering bin Laden.
Pakistan, facing public anger over what was seen as an unacceptable violation of sovereignty, sent home most US Army trainers in the country and said Thursday that it no longer wanted American financial assistance.
Panetta dined with General Kayani and Shuja Pasha, after arriving Friday, said the officials, who did not give their names to discuss the high-level meeting.
Panetta’s relationship with both men will be key in his new role, presuming he is speedily confirmed as the next US defence chief.
One of the key items of contention between Pakistan and the US: As an act of faith to restore relations with the Pakistanis, US intelligence shared the suspected location of explosive material held by the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network at two compounds in the Pakistani tribal areas, according to a Pakistani and a US official.
The US official said that after the intelligence was shared, the explosive material was moved. The Pakistani official told The Associated Press that they checked out the locations, but nothing was there, and that they intend to investigate to dispel US suspicions that the Pakistani intelligence service had tipped off the militants.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence operations.Pakistan must do more to go after militants within its borders, Panetta said in remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing. The CIA director said that after the bin Laden raid, the US asked Islamabad to ”take a number of concrete steps to demonstrate cooperation and counterterrorism.”
One of those steps is the formation of a joint intelligence team to track down militant targets inside Pakistan, drawing in part from the trove of bin Laden records taken from his personal office during the raid.
Pakistani officials say the Americans have shared some intelligence from the trove, and the Americans say the Pakistanis are working on providing visas for a small number of US intelligence officers to come to Pakistan to join the team, but both sides complain the effort is moving very slowly.
The US wants that team to pursue a list of five high-value targets it handed to the Pakistani leadership during another high-level visit to Pakistan by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and chairman of the joint chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, along with CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell, who met Pasha separately.The target list included al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri, who was reportedly hit by a drone strike in the Pakistani tribal areas last Friday. But both sides say that hit was not the direct result of the intelligence partnership nor data from the material seized from the bin Laden compound.
US officials have described Kashmiri as al Qaeda’s military operations chief in Pakistan. He was rumoured to be a contender to replace bin Laden as the terror network’s chief.
Pakistan’s interior minister said Monday he was ”100 per cent” certain that the wanted al Qaeda commander was dead after the drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
US officials will not confirm his death out of caution because he was reported dead in strikes twice before.
A Pakistani official said Panetta would stay for a second day of talks with officials, in which they hope to discuss what US intelligence officers will be allowed to do, and how many will be allowed into the country, as part of the joint intelligence team.
Panetta’s visit to Islamabad coincides with a trip by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in which he is likely to discuss the role Islamabad can play in negotiations with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan.
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