Washington, Sept 24: Pakistan's spy agency ISI not only supports but also encourages terrorist outfits, particularly the Haqqani militant network, the US said on Friday, underlining that it expected the Pakistani leadership to snap these ties.
“All I can tell you that we are confident that the ISI continues to support and even encourage the Haqqanis to launch these attacks. I am not going into specifics of the intelligence that we have about the support,” Captain John Kirby, spokesperson of Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon reporters during an off-camera interaction.
When asked about the denial being issued by the Pakistani leadership on the allegations, Kirby said that he and the Chairman stand by those comments. “The chairman stands by what he testified before the US Senate,” he said.
Mullen told lawmakers yesterday that the Haqqani network, “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's internal services intelligence agency.”
“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,” Mullen said on the Capitol Hill.
Kirby said the the Chairman made it very clear yesterday. “He used Haqqani as an example. If you look at his statements that there are other extremist groups such as the Queta Shoura that has the ISI support,” the spokesperson of Mullen said.
When asked if the US is considering the option of declaring ISI itself as a terrorist outfit now that it has the evidence of its links, Kirby responded: “I am not going to go further than what he (Mullen) said”. PTI
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