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June 12, 2012

Pakistan Probe Finds Against Former U.S. Envoy

By TOM WRIGHT

A Pakistani judicial commission found that the country's former ambassador to the U.S. secretly attempted last year to enlist the Obama administration's support to reduce the power of the nation's army.

Pakistan's supreme court in December asked the three-judge commission to look into allegations that Husain Haqqani, the former ambassador, wrote a memo asking for Washington's help to stop a possible military coup in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces.

The commission's report, submitted to the court Tuesday, said Mr. Haqqani did write the memo and accused him of being disloyal to Pakistan.

Mr. Haqqani, in response, said the report was "political and one-sided." He said the release was timed to distract from recent accusations of corruption against the son of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Mr. Haqqani, who was forced to resign over the issue and is now a resident in the U.S., again Tuesday denied writing the memo.

The allegations against him were made by Mansoor Ijaz, a U.S. businessman who says he delivered the missive on behalf of the former ambassador.

The U.S. Defense Department acknowledged last year that Adm. Michael Mullen, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, received the memo but didn't take its contents seriously.

The memo asked for U.S. help in countering the Pakistan military's powerful domestic political role. It was unclear how the U.S. could have effectively engineered such a development.

The memo sparked a domestic political furor in Pakistan, with opposition lawmakers pushing for a probe. The scandal emerged at a time when Pakistan's army was facing domestic criticism for the unilateral U.S. raid on Pakistani soil that killed bin Laden.

It's unclear whether the commission's findings will lead to a formal criminal case against Mr. Haqqani.

Write to Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com