Bharat Rakshak

India’s Research and Analysis Wing corroborated the Afghan warning three days after RAM’s report. Based on communications intelligence and informants’ reports, RAW said the attack would most likely be carried out using a Toyota suburban utility vehicle.

Less than a week before the bombing, United States military intelligence personnel monitoring terrorist communications in Afghanistan obtained new information on the attack. Plans to execute a fidayeen strike, they learned, had been dropped. Instead, a car-bomb was being prepared. Government sources said this last warning was accurate down to the last detail, even asserting that the vehicle would have Kabul licence plates.

But, if the US were actively monitoring this module, they surely would have come across Paki govt/ISI involvement....Isnt Gates contradicting them when he says he has no proof of any external agency?
this info of GOTUS having info must be a way of the GoI telling the world that US is in the loop in all these events and is only saving its Munna........

But, if the US were actively monitoring this module, they surely would have come across Paki govt/ISI involvement....Isnt Gates contradicting them when he says he has no proof of any external agency?

But, if the US were actively monitoring this module, they surely would have come across Paki govt/ISI involvement....Isnt Gates contradicting them when he says he has no proof of any external agency?
this info of GOTUS having info must be a way of the GoI telling the world that US is in the loop in all these events and is only saving its Munna........

Since this is little too late for the four Indians who dies, I am posting this story here and not in the "other" thread!! Grrrrr:

'US poised to bomb Pakistan'

Better late than never!!!!!!!!

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a senior CIA official had confronted Pakistani officials with evidence of ISI links to militants, in addition to its involvement in a recent suicide car bomb attack outside the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 58 people.

New York Times

Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: August 1, 2008

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

August 1, 2008
Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India. Within days of the bombings, Indian officials accused the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of helping to orchestrate the attack in Kabul, which killed 54, including an Indian defense attaché.

This week, Pakistani troops clashed with Indian forces in the contested region of Kashmir, threatening to fray an uneasy cease-fire that has held since November 2003.

The New York Times reported this week that a top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled to Pakistan this month to confront senior Pakistani officials with information about support provided by members of the ISI to militant groups. It had not been known that American intelligence agencies concluded that elements of Pakistani intelligence provided direct support for the attack in Kabul.

American officials said that the communications were intercepted before the July 7 bombing, and that the C.I.A. emissary, Stephen R. Kappes, the agency’s deputy director, had been ordered to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, even before the attack. The intercepts were not detailed enough to warn of any specific attack.

The government officials were guarded in describing the new evidence and would not say specifically what kind of assistance the ISI officers provided to the militants. They said that the ISI officers had not been renegades, indicating that their actions might have been authorized by superiors.

“It confirmed some suspicions that I think were widely held,” one State Department official with knowledge of Afghanistan issues said of the intercepted communications. “It was sort of this ‘aha’ moment. There was a sense that there was finally direct proof.”

The information linking the ISI to the bombing of the Indian Embassy was described in interviews by several American officials with knowledge of the intelligence. Some of the officials expressed anger that elements of Pakistan’s government seemed to be directly aiding violence in Afghanistan that had included attacks on American troops.

Some American officials have begun to suggest that Pakistan is no longer a fully reliable American partner and to advocate some unilateral American action against militants based in the tribal areas.

The ISI has long maintained ties to militant groups in the tribal areas, in part to court allies it can use to contain Afghanistan’s power. In recent years, Pakistan’s government has also been concerned about India’s growing influence inside Afghanistan, including New Delhi’s close ties to the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

American officials say they believe that the embassy attack was probably carried out by members of a network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose alliance with Al Qaeda and its affiliates has allowed the terrorist network to rebuild in the tribal areas.

American and Pakistani officials have now acknowledged that President Bush on Monday confronted Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, about the divided loyalties of the ISI.

Pakistan’s defense minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told a Pakistani television network on Wednesday that Mr. Bush asked senior Pakistani officials this week, “ ‘Who is in control of ISI?’ ” and asked about leaked information that tipped militants to surveillance efforts by Western intelligence services.

Pakistan’s new civilian government is wrestling with these very issues, and there is concern in Washington that the civilian leaders will be unable to end a longstanding relationship between members of the ISI and militants associated with Al Qaeda.

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, did not return a call seeking comment.

Further underscoring the tension between Pakistan and its Western allies, Britain’s senior military officer said in Washington on Thursday that an American and British program to help train Pakistan’s Frontier Corps in the tribal areas had been delayed while Pakistan’s military and civilian officials sorted out details about the program’s goals.

Britain and the United States had each offered to send about two dozen military trainers to Pakistan later this summer to train Pakistani Army officers who in turn would instruct the Frontier Corps paramilitary forces.

But the British officer, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, said the program had been temporarily delayed. “We don’t yet have a firm start date,” he told a small group of reporters. “We’re ready to go.”

The bombing of the Indian Embassy helped to set off a new deterioration in relations between India and Pakistan.

This week, Indian and Pakistani soldiers fired at each other across the Kashmir frontier for more than 12 hours overnight Monday, in what the Indian Army called the most serious violation of a five-year-old cease-fire agreement. The nightlong battle came after one Indian soldier and four Pakistanis were killed along the border between sections of Kashmir that are controlled by India and by Pakistan.

Indian officials say they are equally worried about what is happening on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border because they say the insurgents who are facing off with India in Kashmir and those who target Afghanistan are related and can keep both borders burning at the same time.

India and Afghanistan share close political, cultural and economic ties, and India maintains an active intelligence network in Afghanistan, all of which has drawn suspicion from Pakistani officials.

When asked Thursday about whether the ISI and Pakistani military remained loyal to the country’s civilian government, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sidestepped the question. “That’s probably something the government of Pakistan ought to speak to,” Admiral Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, the militia commander, battled Soviet troops during the 1980s and has had a long and complicated relationship with the C.I.A. He was among a group of fighters who received arms and millions of dollars from the C.I.A. during that period, but his allegiance with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the following decade led the United States to sever the relationship.

Mr. Haqqani and his sons now run a network that Western intelligence services say they believe is responsible for a campaign of violence throughout Afghanistan, including the Indian Embassy bombing and an attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul earlier this year.

David Rohde contributed reporting from New York, and Somini Sengupta from New Delhi.

August 2, 2008
Pakistan Denies Report Its Spy Service Planned Kabul Blast
By SALMAN MASOOD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— Pakistan on Friday angrily rejected a report that its powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, helped plan the bombing, according to United States officials, The New York Times reported in Friday’s editions.

“The government has already stated that there are no links or evidence of I.S.I. involvement in the Kabul bombing," Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s Information Minister, said.

A foreign ministry spokesperson, Muhammad Sadiq, was quoted by The Associated Press as describing the report as “total rubbish” and “baseless.”

“The foreign newspapers keep writing such things against ISI, and we reject these allegations,” he said.

American and NATO officials have blamed elements of ISI for supporting and abetting the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani denials come amid political and media uproar in the country over the role of the ISI, and who should control the powerful intelligence agency, which has been described as a “state within a state.”

On the eve of a visit to the United States by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani last weekend, the government issued a memorandum on July 26 placing the Intelligence Bureau and Inter-Services Intelligence under control of the civilian government, in the Interior Ministry, rather than the military, with “immediate effect.”

Hours later, under pressure by top military officials, the government backtracked, however, issuing a press release at 3 a.m. on July 27.

The statement said that the earlier notification “only re-emphasizes more coordination between Ministry of Interior and ISI in relation to war on terror and internal security.”

The current director general of the ISI is Lt. Gen Nadeem Taj, a relative of President Pervez Musharraf, who retired as the Army Chief last year. General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani, the current army chief, has also served as the Director General of ISI.

The order to place the ISI under the Ministry of Interior, which is currently headed by Rahman Malik, a close associate of Asif Ali Zardari, the chairman of Pakistan Peoples’ Party, was described as a “failed civilian coup” by Ikram Sehgal, a defense and military analyst in an op-ed piece Thursday in The News, the country’s leading English daily.

“Emasculating the ISI had relevance only to personal gain, having nothing to do with national interest”, Mr. Sehgal wrote in the article. He added that the move by the government was intended to “grandly show the United States that the civilian government had brought the ISI to heel” and to “enhance and solidify Asif Ali Zardari’s control over the country.”

If that was the intent, the effect may have been the opposite, with the ISI and the military coming out on top.

Talat Masood, a retired general and military analyst, in an op-ed piece appearing Thursday in Daily Times, another leading daily, took a different viewpoint and wrote that the government was “justified in trying to bring the premier intelligence agency under civilian control.”

But the manner in which the government went about this “illustrates that Pakistan’s decision making process about major national issues is extremely flawed”, Mr. Masood wrote.

August 2, 2008
Indian Official Sees Sinking Relations With Pakistan
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

BANGALORE, India — The Indian Foreign Secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon, said his country’s relationship with Pakistan had sunk to a new low since 2003, when the two nuclear rivals stepped back from the brink of war and began peace talks.

His unusually blunt public comments come on the heels of several cease-fire violations on the disputed border of Kashmir and a deadly bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which India and the United States have blamed Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency , the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.

“If you ask me to describe the state of the dialogue, it is in a place where it hasn’t been in the last four years,” Mr. Menon told journalists at the annual summit meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. “We face a situation where things have happened in the recent past which were unfortunate and which, quite frankly, have affected the future of the dialogue.”

Pakistan has denied that it had any hand in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul last month, which killed 58 people, including four Indians.

India accuses Pakistan of three breaches of the 2003 cease-fire on the so-called Line of Control in Kashmir.

After the Kabul blast, Mr. Menon had described the relationship as “under stress.”

“That is why we are talking to Pakistan,” he added Friday. “That is why we are carrying on the conversation.”

India has not cut off the peace talks, and privately, Indian officials have said that the peace effort has been strained by internal political problems inside Pakistan and the openings it may have created for hard-line forces. “If you have this fluid situation, you have elements within the army, within the ISI who have the opportunity to move forward with their own agenda, with respect to Afghanistan and India,” said a senior Indian official last week. He would not allow his name to be published because he is not authorized to speak publicly on the subject. “The peace process is in limbo. There is no direction. This is what has opened up the door to these elements.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India is scheduled to meet with his Pakistani counterpart, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, on Saturday at the summit meeting in Colombo.

July 30, 2008
C.I.A. Outlines Pakistan Links With Militants
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.

The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants.

The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The C.I.A. has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks.

That ISI officers have maintained important ties to anti-American militants has been the subject of previous reports in The New York Times. But the C.I.A. and the Bush administration have generally sought to avoid criticism of Pakistan, which they regard as a crucial ally in the fight against terrorism.

The visit to Pakistan by the C.I.A. official, Stephen R. Kappes, the agency’s deputy director, was described by several American military and intelligence officials in interviews in recent days. Some of those who were interviewed made clear that they welcomed the decision by the C.I.A. to take a harder line toward the ISI’s dealings with militant groups.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is currently in Washington meeting with Bush administration officials. A White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, would not say whether President Bush had raised the issue during his meeting on Monday with Mr. Gilani. In an interview broadcast Tuesday on the PBS program “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” Mr. Gilani said he rejected as “not believable” any assertions of ISI’s links to the militants. “We would not allow that,” he said.

The Haqqani network and other militants operating in the tribal areas along the Afghan border are said by American intelligence officials to be responsible for increasingly deadly and complex attacks inside Afghanistan, and to have helped Al Qaeda establish a safe haven in the tribal areas.

Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the acting commander of American forces in Southwest Asia, made an unannounced visit to the tribal areas on Monday, a further reflection of American concern.

The ISI has for decades maintained contacts with various militant groups in the tribal areas and elsewhere, both for gathering intelligence and as proxies to exert influence on neighboring India and Afghanistan. It is unclear whether the C.I.A. officials have concluded that contacts between the ISI and militant groups are blessed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s spy service and military, or are carried out by rogue elements of Pakistan’s security apparatus.

With Pakistan’s new civilian government struggling to assert control over the country’s spy service, there are concerns in Washington that the ISI may become even more powerful than when President Pervez Musharraf controlled the military and the government. Last weekend, Pakistani military and intelligence officials thwarted an attempt by the government in Islamabad to put the ISI more directly under civilian control.

Mr. Kappes made his secret visit to Pakistan on July 12, joining Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for meetings with senior Pakistani civilian and military leaders.

“It was a very pointed message saying, ‘Look, we know there’s a connection, not just with Haqqani but also with other bad guys and ISI, and we think you could do more and we want you to do more about it,’ ” one senior American official said of the message to Pakistan. The official was briefed on the meetings; like others who agreed to talk about it, he spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacy of Mr. Kappes’s message.

The meetings took place days after a suicide bomber attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing dozens. Afghanistan’s government has publicly accused the ISI of having a hand in the attack, an assertion American officials have not corroborated.

The decision to have Mr. Kappes deliver the message about the spy service was an unusual one, and could be a sign that the relationship between the C.I.A. and the ISI, which has long been marked by mutual suspicion as well as mutual dependence, may be deteriorating.

The trip is reminiscent of a secret visit that the top two American intelligence officials made to Pakistan in January. Those officials — Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director — sought to press Mr. Musharraf to allow the C.I.A. greater latitude to operate in the tribal territories.

It was the ISI, backed by millions of covert dollars from the C.I.A., that ran arms to guerrillas fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It is now American troops who are dying in Afghanistan, and intelligence officials believe those longstanding ties between Pakistani spies and militants may be part of an effort to destabilize Afghanistan.

Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment about the visit by Mr. Kappes or about the agency’s assessment. A spokesman for Admiral Mullen, Capt. John Kirby, declined to comment on the meetings, saying “the chairman desires to keep these meetings private and therefore it would be inappropriate to discuss any details.”

Admiral Mullen and Mr. Kappes met in Islamabad with several high-ranking Pakistani officials. They included Mr. Gilani; Mr. Musharraf; Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief of staff and former ISI director; and Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj, the current ISI director.

One American counterterrorism official said there was no evidence of Pakistan’s government’s direct support of Al Qaeda. He said, however, there were “genuine and longstanding concerns about Pakistan’s ties to the Haqqani network, which of course has links to Al Qaeda.”

American commanders in Afghanistan have in recent months sounded an increasingly shrill alarm about the threat posed by Mr. Haqqani’s network. Earlier this year, American military officials pressed the American ambassador in Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, to get Pakistani troops to strike Haqqani network targets in the tribal areas.

Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the senior NATO commander in Afghanistan until last month, frequently discussed the ISI’s contacts with militant groups with General Kayani, Pakistan’s military chief.

During his visit to the tribal areas on Monday, General Dempsey met with top Pakistani commanders in Miramshah, the capital of North Waziristan, where Pakistan’s 11th Army Corps and Frontier Corps paramilitary force have a headquarters, to discuss the security situation in the region, Pakistani officials said.

North Waziristan, the most lawless of the tribal areas, is a hub of Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters, and the base of operations for the Haqqani network.

On Tuesday, Pakistani security forces raided an abandoned seminary owned by Mr. Haqqani, Pakistani officials said. No arrests were made.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

August 2, 2008
U.S. Presses Pakistani Government to Place Its Spy Agency Under Civilian Control
By HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is increasing pressure on Pakistan’s fledgling civilian government to bring the country’s spy service under civilian control, according to American and Pakistani officials.

During meetings in Washington this week with Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, senior Bush administration officials pressed their Pakistani counterparts to assert control over Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, the American officials said. The pressure comes as relations between India and Pakistan deteriorate following reports of ISI involvement in the recent bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The American pressure reflects heightened concerns at the State Department, Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency that operatives in the ISI, who have long been believed to have close ties to Pakistani militants, have become bolder and more open in their support for militant Islamist organizations.

The New York Times reported this week that American intelligence agencies had said they have evidence that members of the ISI helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul.

In an interview on Friday, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said that American authorities have yet to show Pakistani officials specific evidence to support that conclusion.

“If any evidence were to be presented against any individual in Pakistan, or against the interest of Pakistan’s neighbors, then the government would certainly act on that evidence,” he said.

Mr. Haqqani hinted, however, that the civilian government would investigate any ISI officers who might be in league with militants, and laid blame on President Pervez Musharraf, who was firmly in power until elections earlier this year.

“Several outstanding problems in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan that the elected government inherited from the past are currently being resolved,” Mr. Haqqani said. “These include issues of trust between our two intelligence services.”

But bringing the ISI under civilian authority is easier said than done, as Pakistan’s new government found out last week. On Saturday night, while Mr. Gilani was en route to Washington, his government announced that the ISI would report to the country’s Interior Ministry.

One day later, after objections from inside Pakistan’s security apparatus, the government issued a clarification, saying that it had been “misinterpreted” and that the decree only “re-emphasizes more coordination” between the Interior Ministry and the ISI.

The Indian foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon, said Friday that his country’s relationship with Pakistan had sunk to its lowest level since 2003, when the nuclear rivals stepped back from the brink of war and began peace talks.

“If you ask me to describe the state of the dialogue, it is in a place where it hasn’t been in the last four years,” Mr. Menon told journalists at the annual meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.

“We face a situation where things have happened in the recent past which were unfortunate and which, quite frankly, have affected the future of the dialogue,” he said.

India has not cut off the peace talks, and Indian officials have said privately that the peace effort has been strained by political problems in Pakistan and the openings they may have created for hard-line forces.

“If you have this fluid situation, you have elements within the army, within the ISI, who have the opportunity to move forward with their own agenda, with respect to Afghanistan and India,” a senior Indian official said last week.

“The peace process is in limbo,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. “There is no direction. This is what has opened up the door to these elements.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India is scheduled to meet with Mr. Gilani on Saturday in Colombo.

At the State Department, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte has been in charge of the administration’s efforts to press Pakistan, administration officials said. Several officials noted that some officials in the Bush administration had begun to express a nostalgia for Mr. Musharraf, who has largely been pushed to the sidelines since his party lost elections in February.

While the State Department has publicly called for democratic elections and civilian rule in Pakistan, some officials said they believed that Mr. Musharraf had more authority to bring reform to the security services.

Another Bush administration official said Pakistan’s government had yet to assure the administration that it could control the ISI. “There are real questions about the organization’s loyalty,” the official said. “In the wake of political gridlock and a lack of a clear political direction, some elements of the ISI have started to exercise certain prerogatives.”

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.

But some experts said the Bush administration should be more patient in allowing the new Pakistani government to assert its authority after years of military rule in Pakistan.

“In general, this administration at its upper reaches has been cool to the elected government from the start,” said Teresita Schaffer, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They like to look at Musharraf as a factor for stability.”

A senior Pakistani official sharply disputed that Mr. Musharraf had been more effective at exerting control over the ISI. “It’s not disarray in the civilian government that has brought a lot of this to light,” the senior official said. “It’s the fact that the change of government has brought out to the open a lot that was kept secret before.”

Several foreign policy experts noted that there was nothing new in the ISI’s close ties to militant Islamist groups. “People tend to forget the frustrations that were there when Musharraf was in place,” said Daniel Markey, a former South Asia expert at the State Department. “The civilians are a mess right now, and the government is in a state of flux. When there’s flux, individuals in the ISI revert to form.”

Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from Bangalore, India, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Brahma Chellany is correct. Problem is totally internal. US is using pakistan against India only because representatives of 1.20 billion population lack balls.

Gandugiri.

One might think that the public might come on board for putting ISI on a leash, along with having the Supreme Court justices restored.

Let's see how Nawaz plays the situation to the public.

So never before have Nawaz and Uncle had so much common ground together. If both worked together, then Nawaz gets Mushy out of his hair, and Uncle gets ISI out of its hair. Quid pro quo. One hand scratches the other.

Regarding popular sentiments of man-on-street, I'd say that Abdul-Q-Public is more attracted to supporting reinstating the judges than to supporting protecting ISI.
So use this existing momentum of the public in reinstating the judges, and let's see what Mushy does. If Mushy dismisses the govt over the judges, then he'll really anger the public, and thus would not be able to rally popular opinion to help ISI.
Mushy is still the Most Hated Man in Pakistan.

The only other way out of this scenario, would be if ISI were to assassinate Nawaz (a la Benazir) to remove any potential threat posed by him from the picture. That would put Uncle on the back foot -- maybe enough to convince them to wash their hands of Pak. That might leave Shahbaz Sharif as a successor (hopefully he wouldn't be a merry widower like Zardari)

So what now?

just wait for the next attack?

By Jay Solomon
Word Count: 870

WASHINGTON -- Officials in the Bush administration say renewed tensions between India and Pakistan could be damaging U.S. efforts to conquer the Taliban and achieve stability in Afghanistan.

These concerns surfaced Thursday when the U.S. charged that Pakistan's intelligence agency helped militants carry out an attack last month on the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 58 people.

U.S. officials said Thursday they concluded that elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, aided the attack, based on telecommunications intercepts linking Pakistani intelligence officials to Afghan insurgents. The U.S. officials said India's security services drew similar conclusions based on their own ...

"Having the Indians running around Afghanistan was sure to invite retaliation," said a US intelligence official with extensive experience in Afghanistan. "We may need to play a more direct role in calming things down.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama proposed just that in an interview last week. "If one of the central concerns of Pakistan is its security posture towards India, then we need to put that on the table for discussion as we try to solve the problems in Afghanistan," he said

Ultimate aim of US in short term is - to minimize casualty rate in afghanistan, by putting pressure on ISI. And what can be best way to make them act by threatening to side with India(although for a week!).

You are correct.

This India-US honeymoon lasts for only about a week, by which time the ISI dudes are persuaded to toe the US line. After which it is back to equal-equal.

Sanjay M, the US may be willing to work with NS, but definitely not NS. One of the major reasons for NS's popularity currently is the image he has cultivated that he will not bend down to the diktats of the US. In today's Pakistan, anyone seen as even having a remote connection with the US, stands to lose a lot of popularity. NS has been assiduous recently in distancing himself from the satanic US. For him, getting rid of ISI from his back is not as important as losing the trust of the people, perhaps.

You are correct about the popular sentiment. Musharraf is the most hated man, no doubt. The hitch in reinstating the judges is that it is only the ex-CJP, Iftikhar Chaudhry, who can take on Musharraf, not the others. The PPP is unwilling to specifically reinstate him, while they are willing to reinstate the others. In fact, they are categorical about this. That's where the PML(N)-PPP talks broke down. Zardari, while denouncing Musharraf every now and then, is actually protecting him and he has been assured of PML-Q's support if and when it is needed. So, both Zardari & Musharraf are hand-in-glove at present. Even if the rest of the judges are reinstated, they will have to reconstitute the bench hearing the case in view of the changed circumstances and the present CJP and the Registrar will ensure that the Bench will have more Musharraf supporters.

That's a real possibility, the assassination of Nawaz. He has been demanding Musharraf should be tried for sedition and no safe passage be given to him. Like why Zia hanged ZAB, it is either one or the other. There is every motive for Musharraf to indulge in that. As for Shahbaz, he has two wives !

PS: I always believed that it was the Musharraf-Shujaat combination that bumped off BB with the help of ISI. They then diverted the attention on Taliban. Taliban's protestations of innocence in this may well be true.

Even under Indira Gandhi, the strategic policy started doddering. Ultimately one person by themselves cannot take good and rational decisions all the time. Everyone is bound to miss a trick once in a while and that is the problem with that kind of setup.

We need a different approach to the present terror based foreign policy mechanism practised by Pakistan. A society of elders needs to be identified and given responsibilities to make strategic policies overriding even the Prime Minister. This will ensure continuity of policy across govts.

Secondly all people need to be united under one inspirational symbol by a charismatic leader. This symbol should be the ideal bridge to the final goal of establishing a truly dharmic state. As to what this symbol could be .. not really sure. Probably we could all convert to Sikhi and make every citizen a warrior for the country.