Pakistani Security Adviser Axed
This story was written by CBS News' Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad.
Just hours after Pakistani media broadcast claims from an unnamed senior official that said the sole surviving gunman of the Mumbai attacks last November was from Pakistan, the nation's prime minister sacked his top national security adviser.
A senior Pakistani government official who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity confirmed that Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani fired (Ret.) Major General Mehmood Durrani, the national security adviser, after he was found to be the source of the information leaked on the citizenship of Ajmal Kasab. "He (Durrani) spoke out of turn. Clearly he was not authorized to speak in this way."
Separately, GEO TV, a privately-owned Pakistani TV channel, Wednesday night reported Durrani's firing.
The issue of Kasab's citizenship is important for Pakistan. In the weeks following the Mumbai attacks, senior Pakistani government officials have refuted claims from Indian officials that Kasab was a Pakistani citizen. The Pakistani officials were trying to distance their country from the Mumbai attacks at a time when India insisted that there were close links between the Mumbai gunmen and Pakistan.
"For Pakistan, defending its position in this case is important. Many people fear that Pakistan's failure to come clean may provoke India to take the military route such as attacking sites in Pakistan that it suspects belong to hardline militants" said a Western diplomat in Islamabad who also spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity.
Both India and Pakistani, who are nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors, have gone to war three times during their 61-year history as independent states. Their relationship has taken a qualitatively different position since 1998 when Pakistan carried out its first nuclear tests, matching India's nuclear capabilities. Western diplomats warn another war between India and Pakistan could bring true the horrible scenario of the two countries using nuclear bombs to target each other.
U.S. Vice President-elect Joe Biden is due to visit southwest Asia by the end of this week amid expectations shared by Indian and Pakistani officials that he will try to pacify their strained relations.
In addition to the prospect of a nuclear exchange between the two neighbors, U.S. officials are also worried that an Indo-Pak conflict will force Pakistan to abandon its deployment of up to 170,000 troops on the Pak-Afghan war, where they are principally fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants who actively engaged in fighting U.S. and other Western troops in Afghanistan.