Indian Defence Review

The “Dawn News” of Karachi has reported as follows:

“President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday (December 6,2011) arrived in Dubai for a medical check-up. According to presidential spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, the President has traveled to Dubai along with his team of doctors for an extensive medical examination. He added that before his departure, President Zardari had separate meetings with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Chairman Senate Farooq H Naik, and Interior Minister Rehman Malik. The President was accompanied not only by his personal doctor Colonel Salman and his medical team, but also by some members of the Assembly, said Mr Babar.”

Zardari frequently visits Dubai where he has considerable property and investments and where his daughters live. Rarely announcements are made about such private visits. This time, though, his spokesman has taken care to announce his departure for Dubai and to specify that it was for a medical check-up.

A subsequent report claims that Zardari has entered a Dubai hospital for a medical examination. Babar has been quoted as having denied that Zardari had undergone a medical examination in Pakistan before he was flown to Dubai.

Zardari frequently visits Dubai where he has considerable property and investments and where his daughters live. Rarely announcements are made about such private visits. This time, though, his spokesman has taken care to announce his departure for Dubai and to specify that it was for a medical check-up.

While no one has questioned that the visit could have been for genuine medical reasons, there has been some speculation as to whether Zardari’s medical condition requiring an urgent check-up might have been triggered by the considerable political pressure faced by him in relation to two current political controversies.

The first controversy relates to the so-called Memogate affair. It is about the claims made by Manzoor Ijaz, an American businessman of Pakistani origin, that his services as an intermediary were used by Hussain Haqqani, the then Pakistani Ambassador to the US, in May to pass on a memo to Admiral Mike Mullen, the then Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, allegedly seeking the good offices of Mullen for exercising pressure on Gen.Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan’s Chief of the Army Staff, not to stage a coup against Zardari in the wake of the US commando raid in Abbottabad on the night of May 2 to kill Osama bin Laden.

Neither Ijaz’s version of the Memogate affair nor Hussain Haqqani’s denial of Ijaz’s claims has carried conviction so far. The matter is under enquiry by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif has sought a judicial enquiry into the claims of Ijaz by the Supreme court. If the Supreme Court agrees to it and initiates an enquiry, it could have the effect of suspending the ISI enquiry into the matter.

It is not clear whether he would still go ahead with his proposed address or whether would use his medical condition as an excuse for postponing it indefinitely.

Zardari himself, who will be as uncomfortable with the prospects of an enquiry by the Supreme Court as with the ISI enquiry, had indicated that he would be addressing a joint session of the two Houses of the Parliament on the controversy after the Muharrum observance was over on December 6. It is not clear whether he would still go ahead with his proposed address or whether would use his medical condition as an excuse for postponing it indefinitely.

The resignation of Hussain Haqqani and his replacement by Ms.Sherry Rehman, who enjoys the confidence of Zardari and is not distrusted by Kayani, as the Pakistani Ambassador to Washington DC has not ended the controversy. The Army as well as the PML of Nawaz Sharif are insisting for a thorough enquiry — each for its own reason. The PML wants to exploit it politically for further weakening Zardari and the Army wants to ensure that Zardari, whom it suspects of being soft to the US, will no longer indulge in such alleged conspiracies against the Army with the complicity of anti-Army and anti-ISI elements in US policy-making circles.