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Kabul attack:Pakistan denies ISI hand

WASHINGTON: Pakistan on Sunday rejected India’s claim that its spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence, was behind the suicide attack on its embassy in Kabul last week, and said it had no interest in whipping up that kind of an environment.

National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan had on Saturday claimed that India had a “fair amount” of intelligence inputs about Pakistan’s involvement in last week’s suicide attack on its embassy in Kabul.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said relations between Islamabad and New Delhi were improving and the country had nothing to gain by curtailing it.

“No, I think Pakistan ... [relations?] are on the mend. They are on a very even keel. They are improving. I’ve had very good interaction in Delhi. The Foreign Minister of India was in Pakistan. We are moving in the right direction. And we have nothing to gain by creating that environment,” Mr. Qureshi told CNN’s Late Edition.

“... I want to assure you that Pakistan is doing whatever it can to be supportive. We feel that we have interest in a peaceful and stable Afghanistan. It is in our enlightened self interest check the cross-border movement in order to have peace.”

Earlier, he told The Washington Post that Pakistan wanted “the air of mistrust” removed. He said the people of the two countries had outpaced the governments in the desire for normalisation of bilateral ties. — PTI

Nirupama Subramanian reports from Islamabad:

Defence Minister Chaudhary Ahmed Mukhtar, told the Express News, a private television channel, that while it was “inappropriate” of India to make such an allegation “without any proof,” it would not have any effect on the India-Pakistan peace process.

Mr. Narayanan’s remarks came on a day when the U.S. also ramped up pressure on Pakistan, reportedly making a similar charge that Pakistani security agencies were backing Taliban and Al Qaeda.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen arrived in Pakistan on Saturday in what seemed to be an unscheduled visit, and apparently did some tough talking in his meeting with Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

The News reported that Admiral Mullen made the one-day visit to share evidence of American claims that “responsible elements within the country’s security agencies were giving comprehensive support to Taliban and Al Qaeda elements.”

According to the report, the evidence shared by the U.S. official, who was accompanied by CIA officials in his meetings, was “non-specific,” and the Pakistan government “refuted it using specific facts.”

According to a report in the Dawn, Admiral Mullen conveyed Washington’s growing frustration with Pakistan’s inability, or unwillingness, to act decisively against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants hiding in “safe havens” in the tribal areas in the north-west frontier, from where they are known to mount cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.

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