April 03, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25, 1429

NEW YORK, April 2: Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has been selected for the United States Army Command and General Staff College’s International Hall of Fame, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Lt-Gen William B. Caldwell, the commander of the US Army’s Combined Arms Centre, which includes the college, said that General Kayani was the fourth Pakistani officer named to the hall. The army has admitted 227 officers from more than 60 countries since the hall was established in 1973.

Former chief of the army staff Gen (retired) Pervez Musharraf, who did not attend the college, is not among them the honourees.

General Kayani is a 1988 graduate of the army college, which is at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and provides advanced training to the army’s most promising officers and to some foreign officers.

The newspaper said that since General Kayani took command of Pakistan’s Army in November, a parade of top American officers and spymasters had trooped to Islamabad to urge him to wage an aggressive campaign against Al Qaeda and other militants in the country’s restive tribal areas.

The American officials have come away gushing about the Pakistani general’s military prowess and his commitment to disentangle the army from domestic politics.

The hall “honours those officers of United States allies’ militaries who have attained the highest command positions in their national service component or within their nation’s armed forces,” Maj-Gen James R. Helmly, the embassy’s defence representative, wrote in a letter to General Kayani on March 20.