‘Pakistan ISI chief and his Indian counterpart should meet’, says former Pakistan NSA Maj Gen (retd) Mahmud Ali Durrani

[Asadullah Syed]

Current affairs ‘Pakistan ISI chief and his Indian counterpart should meet’, says former Pakistan NSA Maj Gen (retd) Mahmud Ali Durrani Former Pakistan NSA Maj Gen (retd) Mahmud Ali Durrani was sacked for saying Ajmal Kasab the only surviving terrorist f the Mumbai attacks, is a Pakistani. In this interaction with The Indian Express Editor-In-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24*7’s Walk the Talk, he says he picked up the phone after 26/11, spoke to NSA M K Narayanan, but could not get him the next time. Q. What led to your very unfortunate departure from the scene? I can’t go into too much detail. I don’t want to wash dirty linen in Delhi. What happened was that I made a statement on Kasab, and the prime minister took umbrage to that. Q. You made an honest statement. There was no point in hiding the fact, because the whole world knew it by then. Let me tell you one thing. Our agencies are blamed the most. But they said, ‘Sir, we need to tell the world. The world thinks we have something to hide, we are certain that he is a Pakistani’. Q. It was not a happy statement, it was embarrassing for Pakistan. I think we have to be upfront with each other. Yes, Kasab is a Pakistani and we are not proud of what he did, but this is a fact. Q. Was there a failure on the Pakistani side in preventing this? No. It’s a huge country and we have mega problems, particularly regarding terrorism. At that time, our total focus was on FATA and Swat. This thing happened not because of us, but in spite of us. I can assure you, had our intelligence any inkling about it, this would not have happened. And I say it as Mahmud Ali Durrani, ex-NSA. More...

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