Pakistan Spy Boss in Washington for Talks

Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the chief of Pakistan’s intelligence agency is visiting Washington D.C. for talks as relations between his country and the US appear to have fallen to an all-time nadir.

“He is going there to discuss the intelligence coordination,” Pakistan army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told Agence France Presse.

However, that may not be so easy. Since the discovery of (and assassination of) al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in a compound in northern Pakistan in May, suspicions have spiraled over the Pakistani government’s possible harboring of terrorists. Much of that ire has focused on the intelligence agency and its chief, Pasha.

Of greater concern to Islamabad is that the US has suspended a proposed $800-million military aid package. On Monday, Pakistan’s defense minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar warned that in absence of that funding from Washington, Pakistani soldiers will be withdrawn from the dangerous Afghan border.

A BBC correspondent in Pakistan said that Pasha will likely raise the subject to aid reductions and also try to convince the US that he is devoted to rooting out terrorists.