The United States demanded Friday that Pakistan "break any link they
have" with the insurgent group that attacked the US embassy in Kabul
and take immediate action against them.
The White House statement
came a day after the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen,
directly accused Pakistan's intelligence service of supporting the
Haqqani network's attack on the embassy and a truck bombing on a NATO
outpost.
Pakistan reacted angrily, saying the humiliating public
attack was "not acceptable" and warned that Washington stood to lose a
vital ally.
But the war of words continued with Washington
signaling a fundamental shift in attitude toward Islamabad and the
insurgent groups that operate from Pakistani havens amid rising
violence in Afghanistan.
"We know the Haqqani network was
responsible for the attacks on our embassy in Kabul," White House
spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.
"We know that the Haqqani
network operates from safe havens in Pakistan, and that the government
of Pakistan has not taken action against those safe havens. This has
been a longstanding concern of the United States, and one that we
discussed with Pakistan, in public and in private."
Carney said
it was "critical" that Pakistan "break any links they have and take
strong and immediate action against this network so they are no longer
a threat to the United States or to the people of Pakistan."
Fears
are now growing in Pakistan that an avalanche of American demands for
action on the Haqqani network is more than just wanting a scapegoat for
American setbacks in the long Afghan war.
Relations, which sank
to a new low after the unilateral American raid that killed Osama bin
Laden in a hideout a stone's throw from Pakistan's top military academy
on May 2, appeared to recover slightly in recent months.
Mullen's
stinging rebuke, made in open testimony to the Senate Armed Services
Committee on Thursday, carried all the more weight because he has been
the pointman of US efforts to forge closer ties with the Pakistani army.
He
accused Pakistan of "exporting" violent extremism to Afghanistan
through proxies and warned of possible action to protect American
troops.
He said the Haqqani network was a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
"With
ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb
attack, as well as the assault on our embassy," he said.
General
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani army chief, said Mullen's
accusations were "very unfortunate and not based on facts."
Kayani
said "the blame game" should give way "to a constructive and meaningful
engagement for a stable and peaceful Afghanistan, an objective to which
Pakistan is fully committed."
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar
told private Geo TV, "We have also conveyed this to the United States,
that you will lose an ally. You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan. You
cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people."
"If you are choosing to do so, and if they are choosing to do so, it will be at their own cost," she said.
Pentagon
officials said their lines of communication to the Pakistani military
remain open. "This is a relationship that's complicated but essential,"
Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters.
A US
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP, however, that
the United States has presented to Pakistan solid evidence of ISI's
links to the Haqqani militants.
Mullen made his views clear to Kayani last Saturday in a meeting in Spain, his spokesman, Captain John Kirby, told reporters.
Mullen
has spoken before about links between the ISI and Islamist militants
but his sharp comments on Thursday came after a surge in attacks on US
troops and interests by the Haqqani network, Kirby said.
"It's
gotten worse. Their activities have become more brazen, more
aggressive, more lethal and the information has become more available
that the these attacks have been supported or even encouraged by the
ISI," he said.
Insurgents besieged the US embassy and NATO
headquarters in Kabul with rocket and gunfire for 19 hours last week,
leaving 15 people dead and turning the most secure district of the
Afghan capital into a battle zone.
On September 10, a truck bombing on a NATO base in Wardak province, not far from the capital, wounded 77 American troops.
Mullen
said there also was credible evidence that the Haqqani network staged
an attack in June on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned in a speech in San Francisco last week that US patience was running out.
"I'm
not going to talk about how we're going to respond. I'll just let you
know that we're not going to allow these kinds of attacks to go on," he
said. AFP
