Pakistan on Saturday backtracked on a decision to send its spy chief to India to help with the Mumbai attack investigation, in a move likely to revive questions about who is in charge of the intelligence agency. The prime minister's office said a representative of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency would go to India instead of its director general, as the government had said. Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai attacks and denied any involvement. Indian officials have linked the attacks to “elements” in Pakistan. A special Pakistani cabinet meeting had been convened to discuss the response to the slaughter. Pakistan's Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani insisted Friday that his country was not involved in the carnage that left more than 200 people dead in Mumbai. Gilani's office said the ISI chief would go to India at the request of India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh. However, Gilani's spokesman Zahid Bashir said on Saturday that the decision had been changed and that a lower-ranking intelligence official would travel instead. He declined to explain the about-face, which followed sharp criticism from some Pakistani opposition politicians and a cool response from the army, which controls the spy agency. Bashir didn't say who would be making the trip or when. “It was not a proper way to send the most elite ranker of a sensitive organization to India,” former federal minister for Population Welfare, Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain, told Saudi Gazette. “There is an embassy in India. They should contact the Pakistani mission and if they cannot be satisfied then they can ask for further action. It was premature to demand a meeting with the ISI chief” he said in Jeddah.
