Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has no links with the banned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, President Asif Ali Zardari said in a Newsweek interview on Saturday.Asked if the country's premier spy agency had shared intelligence with the Lashkar on Kashmir, Zardari said it was "something [that happened] in the old days when dictators used to run the country. Maybe before 9/11, that may have been a position. [But] since then, things have changed to a great extent".
He said the group had now been banned in Pakistan, but such groups "keep re-emerging in different forms". "Whenever there is actionable intelligence, we move in before anyone else does," he said.
Role in politics: The president -- who is scheduled to address a press conference at the President's House to discuss 'key national and international issues' today (Sunday) -- said Benazir Bhutto and he had always believed intelligence agencies have nothing to do with politics. "Since I have been in government, we've had a stated position that ISI has no political role anymore."
He denied US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had asked Pakistan to arrest 'some people', particularly former ISI head Hamid Gul.
"She is a friend and she knows Pakistan is a responsible state, and the Americans and the British know how much my government has done for this operation," Zardari told Newsweek.
Gul was "definitely not in our good books", he said, but added the retired general was not accused in the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month. "He is more of a political ideologue of terror rather than a physical supporter," the president said. He said Rice "did not go into specifics" anyway.