Pak UN envoy acted as messenger

Pakistan’s incumbent envoy to the UN Maleeha Lodhi apparently acted as an informal messenger between the US and former Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, some em-ails of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton indicate.

The US state department released some 1,000 pages of emails of Ms Clinton when she was the secretary of state and for a while used a private email account and a private server for online communication. However, the entire message delivered by Ms Lodhi, who has also served on the same deputation in the US and Britain, on behalf of Gen. Kayani to the US state department has been edited out.

“I got a call from Maleeha Lodhi, who is in London. She gave a message from Kayani,” Vali Nasr, who was then a senior adviser in the office of the special representative for Afghanistan and Paki-stan, wrote on January 21, 2011. The readout of Gen. Kayani’s message through Ms Lodhi — running into two paragraphs — was then sent to Ms Clinton the same day.

She asked this message to be printed on January 30 — three days after Raymond Davis was arr-ested on charges of killing two men in Lahore. The incident had resulted in a crisis in the US-Pak relationship. “Please print,” Ms Clinton wrote to her aide Lauren C. Jiloty on the email with the subject “latest from Pakistan on Kayani 3.0”.

The emails are being released in phases on the directions of a US court. While most of the portions of the email related to Pakistan have been heavily redacted, it does contain in full the text of the phone call between Ms Clinton and Pakistan’s then foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar on July 3, 2012.

“In today’s phone call, foreign minister Khar and I talked about the importance of taking coordinated action against terrorists who threaten Pakistan, the US and the region; of supporting Afghanistan’s security, stability and efforts towards reconciliation; and of continuing to work together to advance the many other shared interests we have, from increasing trade and investment to strengthening our people-to-people ties,” Ms Clinton wrote.

Our countries should have a relationship that is enduring, strategic and carefully defined and that enhances the security and prosperity of both our nations and the region,” Ms Clinton wrote.