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WASHINGTON: The CIA station chief who has left Pakistan for medical reasons is not returning to his post, the US media reported on Sunday.
He was the second CIA station manager in Pakistan to have left the country in mysterious circumstances, the media noted.
US officials who spoke to the media identified him as the man who headed the CIA team that traced Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad.
He arrived in Islamabad late last year after his predecessor was forced to leave when Pakistani officials allegedly leaked his name to the media.
But one media source, ABC News, quoted US and Pakistani officials as saying that the station chief's exit will lead to improved relations between the ISI and the CIA.
The report said that at least three US officials told correspondents that the departing chief of station had an “extremely tense” relationship with his ISI counterparts, including Director General Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha.Officials in Washington told the media that the departure of two station chiefs in less than a year threatened to upset a vital intelligence office.
The officials, however, hoped that it would not harm US intelligence efforts in Pakistan.
Since the May 2 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan forced out “all but a handful of Special Operations Forces working near the border with Afghanistan,” the report said.
Dozens of CIA officials were also forced to leave out of fear of retribution or exposure, the report said, adding that other US officials had been regularly stopped by police in northwest Pakistan asking for papers allowing them to travel, something they say was unnecessary last year.
“The tension seems to stem from the ISI's belief the CIA is still running a clandestine network of American and Pakistani intelligence agents without sharing enough information about their identities or their assignments with the ISI,” the report said.
“The CIA has pledged to provide that information, but Pakistani intelligence officials don't seem to believe their assurances,” the report concluded.
