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Haqqani group is an ISI arm: Mullen
Admiral Mike Mullen, the outgoing US Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, has stuck to his description of the Haqqani network as “a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s ISI, even as the White House and the State Department distanced themselves from his blunt comment, yet asking Islamabad to squarely address the issue.
Following a report in The Washington Post that some top officials are critical of Mullen for having “overstated” the links between ISI and the Haqqani network, a White House spokesman maintained that the Obama administration was united in its assessment that Pakistan needed to deal with these links.
“It’s not language I would use,” spokesman Jay Carney said, when asked about Mullen’s remarks, but agreed with him that links do exist between the ISI and the Haqqani network and that Pakistan needs to address that. The network has safe havens in Pakistan, but the authorities there have not taken action to eliminate them, Carney said.
Mullen himself stuck to his guns in an interview to National Public Radio (NPR), asserting that he would not change a word of the testimony he provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.
With reference to calling the Haqqani network “a veritable arm” of the ISI, Mullen said: “I phrased it the way I wanted it to be phrased.”
He said he decided to talk about Pakistan’s “linkage” with the terror network after the organisation was found to be responsible for attacks that included the September 10 truck bomb and the September 13 attack against the US Embassy in Kabul.
Following a report in The Washington Post that some top officials are critical of Mullen for having “overstated” the links between ISI and the Haqqani network, a White House spokesman maintained that the Obama administration was united in its assessment that Pakistan needed to deal with these links.
“It’s not language I would use,” spokesman Jay Carney said, when asked about Mullen’s remarks, but agreed with him that links do exist between the ISI and the Haqqani network and that Pakistan needs to address that. The network has safe havens in Pakistan, but the authorities there have not taken action to eliminate them, Carney said.
Mullen himself stuck to his guns in an interview to National Public Radio (NPR), asserting that he would not change a word of the testimony he provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.
With reference to calling the Haqqani network “a veritable arm” of the ISI, Mullen said: “I phrased it the way I wanted it to be phrased.”
He said he decided to talk about Pakistan’s “linkage” with the terror network after the organisation was found to be responsible for attacks that included the September 10 truck bomb and the September 13 attack against the US Embassy in Kabul.
