Ex-ISI quotes Left, wants govt to listen to Karat

NEW DELHI: Hamid Gul, former chief of ISI and ideologue of fundamentalism, has said that New Delhi should listen to views of the Indian Communists parties here and stop playing a ���lackey��� to the US.

Appearing on a TV show, he contested that Lashkar-e-Toiba thrives on Pakistani protection. Mr Gul said this perception was ���completely wrong��� and blamed the India���s current engagement with the US for the spate of violence.

���This is a perception that is shared by the Communist parties. India has become a lackey of the US in the lather���s attempts to create a counter-weight to China. We have been routinely hearing it from Left parties,��� he said.

Prakash Karat and his colleagues have been maintaining that the ���sole strategy��� of the US was to capture the Indian market because China will be equal to the US in terms of economy and growth by the middle of this century. ���China has to be encircled as it is the most powerful socialist country capable of challenging the might of the US,��� Mr Karat had said recently.

Mr Husain Haqqani, now Pakistan���s ambassador to Washington, had written about Lashkar in a 2005 essay. ���The most significant jihadi group of Wahhabi persuasion ��� influenced by the doctrine of 18th century Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn-Abdul Wahhab ��� is Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is backed by Saudi money and protected by Pakistani intelligence services,��� Haqqani wrote.

According to Mr Haqqani, LeT justifies its ideology by the religious verse that says, ���you are obligated to fight even though it is something you do not like.��� When this was pointed out to Mr Gul, he gave a curious explanation: ���The essay was written when he was a journalist, much before he became a diplomat.���