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Hamid Mir, a leading Pakistani journalist and the winner of this year's SAARC Lifetime Achievement Award, is in the midst of a controversy after a recording of a telephone conversation allegedly between him and a member of the Pakistani Taliban surfaced late last week.In the tape, Mir is heard providing information regarding Khalid Khawaja, an abducted former Pakistani air force officer who later became an ISI operative.Mir, 43, is currently the editor of Geo TV , and is a regular guest on Indian news channels as an expert on Pakistan and issues related to terrorism.He first shot to international fame when he became, perhaps, the only journalist to interview Osama-bin-Laden thrice.His columns, which preached reconciliation between India and Pakistan soon after the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai, led the Western press to notice him as a peacenik.In the tape, Mir is heard talking to an unidentified man from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, about Khawaja. The sacked air force officer was killed on April 30, allegedly by an extremist group called Asian Tigers-a sub-unit of the Punjabi Taliban-which had abducted him a month earlier.Khawaja was found dead in Miranshah in North Waziristan while filming a documentary on Colonel Imam, a former Pakistani army officer, who was one of the moving forces behind the founding of the Taliban.In the tape, the man alleged to be Mir tells the unidentified Talib to ask Khawaja specific questions on his links with the CIA and his role in the nine-day siege of Islamabad's Lal Masjid in July 2007 in which 154 people had been killed and 50 militants were captured.The tape was first put up on social media Facebook, and was later picked up on May 14 by a blog called 'Let Us Build Pakistan'. The blog says the audio conversation ''... appears to be an intentional leak by the Punjabi Taliban or the ISI. While the exact intentions of this leak are not known, readers/listeners are 'advised to exercise caution' in drawing any conclusion''. Mir hit back with an e-mail sent to Pakistani journalists saying it is a conspiracy by Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who owns the Daily Times newspaper that published a transcript of the conversation.He wrote: ''This is a conspiracy against me. Khawaja was assassinated in April and this tape surfaced in the middle of May just a few days before some important political and legal (sic) events. I am consulting my lawyers and I will go into court against Taseer for publishing a one-sided concocted story against me.'' Intriguingly, nowhere in his e-mail did Mir provide his side of the story. This has led to further suspicion that the man purported to be Mir in the tape is indeed him.The blog published a rebuttal. It said: ''Mr Mir fails to provide his version of the story; explain his views on Khawaja; explain his views on Qadianis; explain his links with the Punjabi Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives including Ghazi Abdul Rashid, Javed Ibrahim Paracha, Shah Abdul Aziz etc; explain any linkage of the tape to the imminent political and legal events (what events exactly is he referring to, and what is the evidence); confide the identity of the person he was speaking to; and disown his voice in the tape.''
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