Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani chaired a special meeting with his top commanders Sunday as an escalating war on words with the U.S. drags relations between the two nations to a new low.
Pakistani officials say the corps commanders met at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi to review the “prevailing security situation” in the country.
The meeting follows scathing U.S. allegations that the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, is assisting the militant Haqqani network attack U.S.-led international forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
The outgoing chairman of the U.S. Joint Chief of Staffs, Admiral Mike Mullen, told a Senate hearing last week that the Haqqani network acts as a “veritable arm” of the ISI, and its fighters planned and conducted this month's assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and on NATO bases in Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials have rejected the allegations as baseless, warning they are detrimental for regional peace efforts.
Speaking Sunday in Islamabad, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the Haqqani network is not operating from Pakistan. He countered U.S. claims by alleging the network was established and trained by the American CIA with support from Pakistan to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Malik reiterated that Pakistan is cooperating with the U.S. in its fight against terrorism, and that he has ordered authorities to tighten border controls between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The U.S. and Pakistan are allies in the war against militants in Afghanistan. But amid the recent allegations Pakistan has warned the U.S. that it risks losing an ally.
A U.S. embassy statement Sunday says the head of U.S. Central Command, General James Mattis, met with Pakistani leaders and emphasized the need for persistent engagements among militaries of the U.S. Pakistan and other countries in the region.
A Pakistan army statement says a Pakistani representative in the talks, Khalid Shameem Wyne expressed concern about the “negative statements emanating” from Washington and stressed the need to address the irritants in the relationship which are “the result of an extremely complex situation.”
