CIA Says Pakistan Spy Agency Helping Militants

Pakistan angrily denies a report that it helped plan bombing in Kabul.

According to Pakistans Dawn newspaper: During his vist to Washington this week, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had an exclusive meeting with CIA chief Michael V. Hayden. Hayden presented him with a "charge sheet on Pakistani intelligence agencies' alleged involvement in jihadi activities. A senior official familiar with the talks said: "Some information in the CIA charge-sheet were so damning that the Pakistanis could not deny them."

The New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies believe that members of Pakistan's spy service, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, helped plan the deadly July 7th bombing of India's embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. 54 people were killed in that attack. Pakistan's government admitted Friday that it needs to purge Taliban sympathizers from the ISI, but it angrily denied a report that the agency helped plan the bombing in Kabul. The US also suspects rogue elements in the ISI of giving militants sensitive information that helps them launch attacks from Pakistan's tribal regions into bordering Afghanistan. They have also been trying to work out an arrangement with Pakistan for curtailing the ISI's power.

During Gilani's visit to Washington President Bush reportedly expressed these concerns. Another difficult issue between the two countries is that the US has used predator drones and missile strikes against suspected Taliban militants and al-Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. On June 11, US forces bombed a border post and killed 11 Pakistani soldiers inflaming anti-American sentiment. The latest deadly strike: a missile that hit a religious school just inside Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Occurred just hours before the meeting between Bush and Gilani. At a joint press conference neither the President nor the Prime minister mentioned these attacks preferring to show that that the US-Pakistan bond is tight and intact despite tensions.

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