Pakistan warns US might lose ally over accusations

Sep 23, 2011, 15:54 GMT

Islamabad/Washington - Pakistani civilian and military officials on Friday lashed out at the United States after the top US military leader accused Pakistani intelligence agencies of supporting Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Hinna Rabbani Khar warned Washington that it could not afford to alienate the people and government of Pakistan.

The outrage followed remarks Thursday before the US Senate Armed Service Committee, by Admiral Mike Mullen, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accusing Pakistan's spy agency of supporting the radical Islamist Haqqani network.

'You will lose an ally,' Khar said in an interview with Geo television from New York, where she is attending the UN General Assembly.

'You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan, you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people. If you are choosing to do so and if they are choosing to do so, it will be at their own cost,' she said.

The top-ranking US military officer accused Pakistani intelligence of being involved in a terrorist attack against the US embassy in Kabul last week. Mullen said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence supported the insurgents behind the attacks that killed 24 people, including the nine attackers.

'The Haqqani network, for one, acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's internal services intelligence agency,' said Mullen, who is soon set to retire and made the boldest US comments yet on Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan.

'With ISI support, the Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy. We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the June 28th attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller, but effective operations.'

Pakistani military chief general Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on Friday termed the allegations 'very unfortunate and not based on facts.'

'Admiral Mullen knows fully well which all countries are in contact with the Haqqanis. Singling out Pakistan is neither fair nor productive,' said Kayani, in an apparent reference to reports that the US had itself established contacts with the Haqqani group in an effort to bring them to the negotiation table.

Kayani said in a statement released by the Pakistan Army that he wished that the blame game in public statements would give way to a constructive and meaningful engagement for a stable and peaceful Afghanistan, an objective to which Pakistan is fully committed.

Mullen had said the connection with extremists was undermining Pakistan's international position and called on them to change.

'In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan and most especially the Pakistani Army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership, but Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate, regional influence,' he said.

Still, Mullen, who has been heavily involved in outreach to his Pakistani counterparts, said there were some bright spots, including joint counterterrorism operations.

The relationship between Washington and Islamabad has been particularly strained since the US raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in May.

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