Haqqani acted on directions of senior Pak govt leaders: Ijaz

 Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, the main accuser in the memo scandal, today claimed that Pakistan's former envoy Husain Haqqani had acted on the directions of senior government leaders and had devised ''bad boys'' as code words to refer to army and ISI chiefs.

Ijaz made the remarks on the second day of his deposition via videoconferencing from London before a Pakistani judicial commission probing the memo scandal which sparked a political crisis in the country.

However, Ijaz offered no information that was not already included in statements he had filed in Pakistan's Supreme Court.

He claimed that Haqqani, the former Pakistani envoy to US, who was forced to resign after the memo issue became public late last year, had devised the code words like "bad boys" to the refer to the chiefs of the Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence.

Ijaz said in his testimony that the envoy wrote him a message referring to the Pakistani government as "friend". He also claimed that Ispahani, which is Haqqani's wife's second name, was the secret code for the Americans.

He further claimed Haqqani had said the Pakistan government was willing to give the US access to the widows of Osama bin Laden after the al-Qaeda leader was killed in a raid by American forces at Abbottabad in May last year.

He also acknowledged that he had prepared the first draft of the alleged memo by himself without taking the consent of Haqqani.

Ijaz went to the Pakistan High Commission in London to continue his deposition, which had begun yesterday, while the three-judge commission appointed by the Supreme Court conducted the proceedings from Islamabad.