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ISLAMABAD: For the second day in a row, the beleaguered ambassador, Husain Haqqani, kept a low profile and stayed away from the media while Mansoor Ijaz enjoyed his five minutes of fame by giving a series of interviews.
Ambassador Haqqani has not been seen or heard much since he landed in Islamabad on Sunday morning.
Any meetings that he was expected to hold with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, President Asif Ali Zardari and Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani never materialised.
The president’s spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, said late night on Monday that he had no knowledge of a meeting between the president and the army chief on Tuesday though he added that this did not mean that one could not take place.
However, an official in the presidency claimed: “The initial investigation has been completed in the light of evidences collected by the military spy agency.” It is expected that some of this investigation will be presented in the meeting of the troika.
However, keeping in mind the close relationship between the president and Mr Haqqani, there is a likelihood that they may have met during the day.
The relative silence also contributed to the sense that temperatures had dropped. The sense of quiet could be attributed to a number of reasons.
There were few new revelations about the controversy on Monday. The latest revelation that the person who had delivered the memo to Admiral Mike Mullen was James Jones, former United States National Security Adviser, created few ripples.
In addition, Mansoor Ijaz’s backtracking on the involvement of President Zardari also created a sense of respite.
In an interview to a private channel, the controversial businessman claimed that in his opinion the president simply asked the ambassador to help him ease the pressure of the ‘generals’ (which according to Ijaz had mounted in the wake of the May 2 American raid in Abbottabad).
He added that as a consequence, Haqqani hatched the plan, contacted him; drafted the memo and informed the president after it had been sent.
As this claim was a complete contradiction to what Ijaz had first said and written in his piece in Financial Times in October, it simply provided a new chance for people to point out his lack of credibility.
Some analysts also interpreted his statement as a sign that President Zardari will remain unscathed – till Sunday there had been reports as well as statements by some politicians that the ‘memo’ implicated the president as well as the ambassador and would lead to the downfall of both. But such dire prognosis was not repeated too loudly on Monday. In fact, the issue did not come up for discussion in parliament on Monday as expected.
Interestingly enough, nothing but silence emanated from GHQ, the aggrieved party if the memo is to be believed. The media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations, awoke from its slumber only to issue a denial of a story concerning a meeting between Imran Khan and US Ambassador Cameron Munter in the presence of DG ISI Shuja Pasha.
That a paper had reported on Sunday that Pasha was the one who flew to London to interview Ijaz and collect evidence from him about the memo was ignored by the military’s media wing.
The fate of the ambassador, on the other hand, remains unclear though the clamour for his resignation and trial also seems to have gone down a notch.
That the ambassador was not going to go down without a fight was also evident from his wife’s statement.
Farahnaz Ispahani, who appeared in public for the first time since the controversy broke out, spoke to the media at the Supreme Court.
Raising questions about the credibility of Ijaz, she made it clear that her husband had the right to take the businessman to court, provided the PPP did not have an objection.
“Whenever the president or the prime minister give us a go-ahead, we will take the matter to the court of law,” she maintained.
