Pak envoy to UN acted as messenger between US, Kayani: Clinton's emails
The emails are being released in phases at the direction of a US court.
Washington: Pakistan's Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi acted as an informal messenger between the Obama Administration and the then army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani, latest bunch of Hillary Clinton's emails indicate.
However, the entire message delivered by Lodhi to the State Department on behalf of Kayani has been redacted.
"I got a call from Maleeha Lodhi (former Pakistan Ambassador to US and UK) who is in London. She gave a message from Kayani," wrote Vali S Nasr - then a senior advisor in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan - on January 21, 2011.
The readout of Kayani's message through Lodhi running into two paragraphs was sent to the then Secretary of State Clinton the same day.
She asked this message to be printed on January 30, three days after an American diplomat Raymond Davis was arrested in Lahore on charges of killing two Pakistanis. The incident immediately resulted in a crisis in US-Pak relationship.
"Please print," Clinton wrote to her aide Lauren C Jiloty on the email with the subject "latest from Pakistan on Kayani 3.0".
On Friday, the State Department released some 1,000 pages of emails of Clinton when she was the Secretary of State, during which she used a private email and a private server.
The emails are being released in phases at the direction of a US court.
While most of the portions of email related to Pakistan have been heavily redacted, it does contain in full the readout of the phone call between Clinton and the then Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar on July 3, 2012.
"I once again reiterated our deepest regrets for the tragic incident in Salala last November. I offered our sincere condolences to the families of the Pakistani soldiers who lost their lives. Foreign Minister Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pakistani military lives. We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pakistani military. We are committed to working closely with Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent this from ever happening again," Clinton said as per the email.
"As I told the former Prime Minister of Pakistan days after the Salala incident, America respects Pakistan's sovereignty and is committed to working together in pursuit of shared objectives on the basis of mutual interests and mutual respect," she said.
"In today's phone call, Foreign Minister Khar and I talked about the importance of taking coordinated action against terrorists who threaten Pakistan, the US and the region; of supporting Afghanistan's security, stability and efforts towards reconciliation; and of continuing to work together to advance the many other shared interests we have, from increasing trade and investment to strengthening our people-to-people ties.
"Our countries should have a relationship that is enduring, strategic and carefully defined and that enhances the security and prosperity of both our nations and the region," Clinton said.