SpyTalk

The Saudis, according to these reports, are nervous about al Qaeda spinoffs destabilizing nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Petraeus and his boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have persuaded The White House to support direct talks with the  Taliban, David Ignatius reported last Sunday in The Washington Post.

Both sides might well think the time for talks is right. With winter closing in, the Taliban can look back over a year when they really took the fight to NATO troops, gaining ground in provinces along the Pakistan border, inflicting the highest casualties yet on U.S. fighters and further weakening the Afghan government's control outside of the capital. 

But the U.S. has reason to believe it's got momentum, too, with its Predator drones proving increasingly effective in finding and annihilating senior al Qaeda leaders in South Waziristan, the lawless zone which straddles Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

To that end, Pakistan's new intelligence chief was in Washington this week for talks with CIA spymaster Gen. Michael V. Hayden. 

The CIA would neither confirm nor deny the talks.

"The agency does not, as a matter of course, comment publicly on discussions with other intelligence services," spokesman Paul Gimigliano said. "When the CIA talks to its foreign partners, it does so with confidence, in confidence."

Little has been written here about Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, which for years has supplied the CIA with intelligence on the Taliban in one room while intriguing with them against the U.S.-backed Afghan government in another. 

Pasha briefly held job as chief of  domestic intelligence in 2004, during which he met with then-top U.S. spy John D. Negroponte and earned his trust, according to the Paris-based newsletter Intelligence Online.

And in August he commanded military operations against Pakistan Talibans in Swat Valley and the tribal zone of Bajaur, the newsletter said.

He has already moved against a dozen senior ISI officers suspected of sympathies for the Taliban, according to some reports. 

But Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA expert on the region, recently told Newsweek that "Nothing tells me they are ready to break the link between ISI and Afghan Taliban."