Kargil: India must not have given Mush tape to Pak

New Delhi, June 23: Revealing that India had handed over to then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif tapes of telecon between General Parvez Musharraf and his chief of staff Lt-Gen Mohammed Aziz to prove Pakistan's role in Kargil war, a senior intelligence officer said this led to drying up of the source and India did not get further information for two years.

''You never ever reveal your source in the intelligence game,'' Major General V K Singh, who was a senior official of India's external intelligence-gathering agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) between 2000-2004, told newsmagazine Outlook which hit the stands today.

Technical wing of RAW had tapped the telephonic conversation in May, 1999 at the height of the Kargil war. The conversation proved beyond doubt that Pakistan army was actively involved in the Kargil incursions. '' The Musharraf tapes were later handed over by the then Vajpayee government to Mr Nawaz Sharif as evidence to prove Pakistan's role in Kargil,'' the magazine added.

In the interview with the journal, the former RAW officer said handing over the tapes was a violation of the basic principles of intelligence gathering,'' adding, it created a lot of problems for the intelligence business. ''So, were the browne points that we earned from sharing the tapes really worth it? This is something that must be debated,'' General Singh, who served in the technical wing of RAW, said.

He said after the tapes were handed over, the Pakistanis came to know the technology being employed by India to tap into their internal communication network and helped them get a fair idea of India's secret listening posts and their capabilities.

''The leakage was quickly plugged by the Pakistanis leading to a virtual drought of quality intelligence for RAW,'' Singh said.

Asked if agencies like RAW learnt any lessons from the Kargil war, General Singh said none of the recommendations of the Kargil Review Committee or the task force on intelligence were ever implemented.

''Institutions such as National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) were supposed to take over all technical intelligence.

Instead there are areas where NTRO and RAW are busy duplicating each other's capability without giving upt on turf. Turf translates into power and no one is ready to give up on power,'' he said.

The former RAW officer also criticised blacking out of certain intelligence from the Kargil Committee report submitted to Parliament by the NDA government. This, he said, ''is shocking because trhere is no Parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies in a functioning democracy like ours. So neither are parliamentarians or the public aware of the failures nor can they participate in addressing the genuine concerns of agencies like RAW and IB (Intelligence Bureau),'' General Singh added.

UNI