Pakistan's ex-US envoy challenges memo scandal probe

The lawyer for Pakistan's former ambassador to Washington Tuesday said a court investigation into a controversial memo seeking US help to rein in the powerful military was illegal. The highly controversial unsigned memo was allegedly an attempt by President Asif Ali Zardari, through his close aide and former envoy Hussain Haqqani, to enlist help from the US military to head off a feared coup in Pakistan last year. American businessman Mansoor Ijaz has claimed that Zardari reportedly feared that the military might seize power in a bid to limit the hugely damaging fallout after US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May. Pakistan's Supreme Court last week decided to set up a judicial commission to investigate the matter. Haqqani's lawyer Asma Jahangir in her petition said "that the constitution of the commission by this honourable court is not permissible by law." "Directions cannot be issued to judges of the High Court to constitute a commission," she said. The head of the ISI intelligence agency, General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, has said Ijaz had enough evidence to back up his allegations and called for a "forensic examination" of the memo. Haqqani has already resigned over the affair and the court has stopped him from leaving Pakistan. Tension between the powerful army and Zardari's weak civilian administration soared over the note, allegedly delivered to then chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen in May and made public by Ijaz in October. The court's order requires contact to be made with Canada-based Research in Motion (RIM) in an attempt to obtain records of BlackBerry messages allegedly exchanged between Ijaz and Haqqani, who denies his involvement. Haqqani who appeared before the commission on Monday said: "The two BlackBerry handsets I had in the United States are the property of the government of Pakistan. These handsets I left in the room of my residence which was used as office," he said. Monday was the second meeting of the commission, being held in the capital Islamabad. It is expected to submit its findings within four weeks. The commission is to meet again on January 16. The court probe puts fresh pressure on the president, who visited Dubai in December over health fears, with most observers expecting early elections sometime in 2012.