Islamabad denies it helped militants attack U.S. troops and officials in Afghanistan. 'You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan,' Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar says.
Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan—
Pakistani officials warned Friday that they could jettison the United States as an ally if American officials continued to accuse Islamabad's intelligence agency of assisting a leading Afghan Taliban group in recent attacks in Afghanistan.
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar cautioned the U.S. against airing allegations such as the blunt charge of collusion between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as ISI, and the militant Haqqani network made Thursday by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan; you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people," Khar said in New York, speaking to a Pakistani television channel. She was in the U.S. for the U.N. General Assembly session.
Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani in a statement called Mullen's remarks "very unfortunate and not based on facts."
Pakistani officials continued to tersely reject the allegations and challenged the U.S. to furnish evidence of ties between the country's intelligence community and the Haqqani group.
Mullen called the Haqqani network "a veritable arm" of the ISI and said the intelligence agency helped Haqqani militants during a [...]
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