ISLAMABAD: In a belated rebuttal to British newspaper Independent’s blog posting on ISI chief Lt-Gen Shuja Pasha’s alleged trip to Arab countries for soliciting support for a coup back home, the military’s public affairs wing on Wednesday dismissed the claim as ‘false’ and unverified.

“Contents of the article are strongly and categorically denied. A legal notice is being served to the newspaper to retract the story and apologise,” ISPR’s rejoinder said.

The clarification came amid a growing debate on the ISI chief’s alleged visit to Arab countries. While a petition filed in the Supreme Court has sought immediate removal of Gen Pasha, the government has annexed the Independent blog posting with its reply to petitions on the memo case being heard by the Supreme Court.

It is interesting to note that the ISPR clarification denied ‘false assertions’ by blogger Omar Warraich, but it was silent on what Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz — the central character in the scandal — said in his interview whose quotes were reproduced in the blog posting.

In his interview with Mr Warraich, Mr Ijaz had claimed that a ‘senior intel source’ had told him that his “information was that Pasha had travelled to a few of the Arab countries to talk about what would be necessary to do in the event they had to remove Zardari from power and so forth”.

He had made a similar claim during his BlackBerry message exchange with former ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani.

The ISPR, however, contradicted Omar Warraich who had questioned the credibility of Mr Ijaz’s claim and even talked about a CIA link to the scandal.

Mr Warraich wrote in his posting: “Even if Gen Pasha did travel to these countries… perhaps nothing unseemly took place.

Perhaps all that was discussed, quite appropriately, was Pakistan’s reaction to the Bin Laden raid.”

The only plausible explanation to this incongruity is that denying Mr Ijaz could question the credibility of his other allegations in the memo affair.

The clarification further said that the ISI chief did not meet any Arab leader between May 1 and 9, as alleged in the article.

“DG ISI’s other visits to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and UAE only, prior to or after this period, were part of routine intelligence sharing activity, during which he interacted with his counterparts only,” the ISPR clarified.