Pakistan denies U.S. allegations of militant ties - San Francisco Chronicle

Islamabad --

Pakistan on Thursday rejected Washington's allegations that it maintains links with the militant Haqqani network and warned that it would not tolerate any ground operation to hunt down members of the group.

Since the Sept. 13 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, American military and civilian leaders have urged Pakistan's primary intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, to sever its ties with the Haqqani group. The Afghan Taliban-allied group uses northwest tribal Pakistan as a base from which to launch attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces in Kabul and eastern Afghanistan.

The language coming from Washington has been particularly strong, with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, accusing the ISI of using the Haqqani network to wage a proxy war against United States, NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned Islamabad that the United States will "take whatever steps are necessary to protect our forces."

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Tehmina Janjua, when asked whether there was any truth to Mullen's charge, tersely answered, "I would say a categoric no."

ISI ties with members of the Haqqani group and its founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, date to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when Pakistan, as well as the United States, backed the resistance. The Haqqani group now fights alongside the Afghan Taliban in the war against the United States and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration, and is led by Haqqani's son, Sirajuddin Haqqani.

Washington has long suspected that the ISI never severed ties to Haqqani. Officials have also repeatedly pressed Pakistan to launch a military operation into the North Waziristan tribal region to uproot Haqqani network fighters from their sanctuary there. Pakistani military leaders have consistently fended off those demands, arguing that its manpower is overstretched as it battles militants in other tribal areas who view Pakistan as their primary enemy. Haqqani network fighters have never directed any attacks against Pakistan.

U.S. officials say they have ample evidence of the ISI's links with the Haqqani group, though they have yet to publicly lay out that evidence.

This article appeared on page A - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle