( October 01, Islamabad, Sri Lanka Guardian) In a major reshuffle in the hierarchy of the Pakistan Army, Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha was on Monday appointed the new chief of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Fourteen new appointments were made and several corps commanders were changed as part of the reshuffle by the army headquarters in Rawalpindi, according to reports.
Pasha, who was serving as Director General of Military Operations in the General Headquarters, will replace Lt Gen Nadeem Taj a distant relative of former President Pervez Musharraf as Director General of the ISI.
Taj was transferred to head the Gujranwala-based 30 Corps. He was appointed as head of the ISI in September last year, shortly before Musharraf stepped down as army chief.
Taj was with Musharraf when the government of former premier Nawaz Sharif allegedly tried to prevent the aircraft carrying them back to Pakistan from Sri Lanka from landing in Karachi in October 1999. Shortly thereafter, Musharraf deposed Sharif and took power in a military coup.
The reshuffle in the army followed the promotion of seven major generals to the rank of lieutenant general earlier in the day. The officers who were promoted are Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Tahir Mahmood, Shahid Iqbal (all from the infantry), Tanvir Tahir (EME), Zahid Hussain (artillery), Mohammad Mustafa Khan and Ayaz Saleem Rana (armoured corps).
Lt Gen Mohammad Mustafa Khan was appointed Chief of General Staff and Lt Gen Shahid Iqbal the commander of the Karachi-based 5 Corps.
The reshuffle was widely anticipated in the wake of Musharraf's resignation as President last month as army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was expected to make changes in the force's hierarchy to bring in a new set of commanders.
Since taking over as chief, Kayani has distanced the army from politics to focus on combating militancy in Pakistan's restive tribal areas.
The US has stepped up pressure for reforms within the ISI after the agency was linked to the July 7 suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 58 people.
Meanwhile Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari secretly met the director of America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Michael Hayden on his recent US visit, a media report said on Monday.
Details of the meeting were not given but a regular columnist of the New York Times reported that Zardari has replaced heads of three directorates of the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI.
Zardari said Pakistan's new government will confront the Taliban militants, to "free the country" from their hold.
"It is my decision that we will go after them (Taliban insurgents), we will free this country," he told Roger Cohen in an interview. "Yes, this is my first priority because I will have no country otherwise. I will be president of what?"
The article said Zardari also spoke for "genuine conciliation" with India and Afghanistan, which is essential to the region's stability.
Asked if the assassination of his wife motivated him to confront Islamic militancy, he replied in the affirmative, but said he intends to fight the Taliban insurgents because they were a "cancer" to the society.
"I will fight them because they are a cancer to my society, not because of my wife only, but because they are a cancer, yes, and they did kill the mother of my children, so their way of life is what I want to kill; I will suck the oxygen out of their system so there will be no Talibs," he was quoted as saying. -Agencies- - Sri Lanka Guardian
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