Click to play videoForeign Affairs Analyst Fareed Zakaria who hosts Global Public Square on CNN spoke to the man that the US is gunning for, former ISI chief Hamid Gul.
In his interview, he denied all kinds of links with LeT and said that if voicing your opinion is terrorism then so let it be.
Fareed Zakaria: US has given four names to the UN of ISI officers who it would like to place on the international terrorist list, you are one of them. What is your reaction to that?
Hamid Gul: It is a frame up, a total frame up. I have a moral voice and I raise that. I have a position which I express freely, openly and like an open book. This is preposterous, wrong.
Fareed Zakaria: What are the charges against you?
Hamid Gul: That, I am helping the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But this is so generalised. It is true that Americans have aggressed in Afghanistan and my position is that whoever is resisting them is justifiable. If that becomes the basis for me being dubbed a terrorist then so be it.
Fareed Zakaria: Are you confident that ISI does not have any formal or informal links with Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)?
Hamid Gul: I have no linkages with them but I do understand the character of an organisation. It is a highly disciplined unlike the others where political appointees can be infiltrated. In the ISI it is only the uniform personnel who come and serve for two-three year and then they revert back to their parent services. So their bread and butter, their career advancement and promotion chances all lie with their armed services that are the navy, army and air force.
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