The Pakistan Army has disputed reports that its security forces personnel had tipped off terrorists about American intelligence officials having discovered two of their suspected bomb-making facilities.
"A spokesperson of the ISPR has strongly refuted reports in the media quoting unnamed US sources that elements in Pakistan security forces tipped off terrorists helping them to escape the purported IED factories in Waziristan. This assertion is totally false and malicious and the facts on ground are contrary to it," the Inter Services Public Relations said in a statement.
The US had provided Pakistan with the specific locations of insurgent bomb-making factories twice in recent weeks, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and vacate the sites before military action could be taken, The Washington Post had reported last week, citing US and Pakistani officials.
According to officials, overhead surveillance video and other information was given to Pakistani officials in mid-May as part of a trust-building effort by the US administration after the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a unilateral US raid inside Pakistani territory on May 2.
But the two installations had been cleared out before Pakistani military units moved against them on June 4, satellite imagery subsequently revealed.
The ISPR spokesperson said that intelligence information was received "regarding four compounds suspected of being used as IED making facilities. Operations were launched on all. Two were found to be used as IED making facilities and have been destroyed."
"Information on other to proved to be incorrect. Some persons have been arrested and they are under investigation," the ISPR statement added.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said Washington is disappointed and suspicious that militants in Pakistan were apparently tipped off that American intelligence officials had discovered two of their suspected bomb-making facilities, but stopped short of concluding that Pakistani officials had leaked the information to the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani insurgents.
"We don't know the specifics of what happened. There are suspicions and there are questions, but I think there was clearly disappointment on our part," Gates told a foreign news agency in an interview. ANI
