Srinagar, December 01: Mansoor Ijaz, the Pakistani American who was at the centre of Memogate, had suggested former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto to “seek separation” from her husband Asif Zardari if she wished to return to Pakistan. At that time, she was shuttling between London and Dubai.
“She (Benazir) also enquired from me what kind of person is this Ijaz?” JKLF leader Yasin Malik told a Kashmir newspaper from Saudi Arabia. “She confided to me, that this man (Ijaz) was offering to negotiate, my return to Pakistan, provided she seeks separation from her husband Asif Zardari.”
Malik had met her in London at the peak of dictator General Parvez Mushraf’s era of Pakistan. Then, Ijaz had acquired a status of being a highly connected confidant of the regimes in Islamabad and Washington.
It was in that capacity he was trying his bit to manage some sort of improvement in the relationship between India and Pakistan with emphasis on Kashmir.
In November 2000, Ijaz had organised a conclave of Kashmir ‘experts’ in Delhi. It was the peak of Ijaz’s glory in the Indian subcontinent as a negotiator enjoying ‘American mandate’.
Reports suggest that it was R James Woolsey, the then CIA director who had trusted Ijaz with an assignment.
——-Agencies