Zardari offers meeting of India-Pak intelligence chiefs

A fresh offer has now been made for a meeting of intelligence chiefs of the two countries, he said without giving any details about when this meeting is expected to take place or what has been India's response to it.

"They (Pakistan army) thought it was too, too soon," Zardari told the NBC News in an interview on being asked why he was overruled by the military on sending ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha to New Delhi.

The Pakistan President claimed he was not "overruled" by the military and said, "eventually we have offered for the intelligence chief to meet (his Indian counterpart).

This is for the first time that Zardari has publicly given an explanation of why he was not able to send the ISI chief to New Delhi despite the fact that Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had made the promise in this regard to his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh over phone on November 28 in the middle of the Mumbai attacks.

This was cited as an example of the military and the ISI overruling the democratically elected Government of Pakistan.