(NSI News Source Info) WASHINGTON - April 8, 2008: Apparently upset with their remarks over alleged link between ISI, Taliban and Al-Qaeda, the Pakistani spy agency chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha refused to meet visiting US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke and American military commander Admiral Mike Mullen. 
In this Aug. 27, 2008 photo released by the U.S. Department of Defense, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen and Navy Rear Adm. Scott van Buskirk, from left, talk with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, center, and Director General, Military Operations, Major Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, on the flight deck aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Gulf. Pasha, the new chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, oversaw military offensives against militants in Pakistan's restive northwest tribal areas.
"Islamabad carefully stage-managed this unprecedented snub by the ISI chief as a means of telegraphing its resentment over a number of issues brewing between Washington and Islamabad," Stratfor, a US think-tank, reported.
This sudden display of confidence on the part of Islamabad will complicate the Obama administration's strategy on the Taliban, the think tank said on Tuesday.
Among the issues of resentment by ISI include, criticism from Mullen and US Central Command chief Gen David Petraeus, who said the intelligence agency was still dealing with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and the increasing US unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in the Pakistani tribal belt.
The ISI and its support base in Pakistan establishment is also upset with American strategy of treating Afghanistan and Pakistan as one theatre and the US's move to involve India in Afghanistan, Stratfor said.
"The snub is also part of an emerging consensus between Pakistan's military and civilian government that Islamabad needs to increase its bargaining power with the US as an ally in the war against militant Islamists," the report said.
In this Aug. 27, 2008 photo released by the U.S. Department of Defense, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen and Navy Rear Adm. Scott van Buskirk, from left, talk with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, center, and Director General, Military Operations, Major Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, on the flight deck aboard USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Gulf. Pasha, the new chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, oversaw military offensives against militants in Pakistan's restive northwest tribal areas.
"Islamabad carefully stage-managed this unprecedented snub by the ISI chief as a means of telegraphing its resentment over a number of issues brewing between Washington and Islamabad," Stratfor, a US think-tank, reported.
This sudden display of confidence on the part of Islamabad will complicate the Obama administration's strategy on the Taliban, the think tank said on Tuesday.
Among the issues of resentment by ISI include, criticism from Mullen and US Central Command chief Gen David Petraeus, who said the intelligence agency was still dealing with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and the increasing US unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in the Pakistani tribal belt.
The ISI and its support base in Pakistan establishment is also upset with American strategy of treating Afghanistan and Pakistan as one theatre and the US's move to involve India in Afghanistan, Stratfor said.
"The snub is also part of an emerging consensus between Pakistan's military and civilian government that Islamabad needs to increase its bargaining power with the US as an ally in the war against militant Islamists," the report said.
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