Pakistan Rejects Afghan Accusations

This story was written for CBSNews.com by Farhan Bokhari, reporting from Islamabad.

This latest tit-for-tat began Monday when President Hamid Karzai's government in Afghanistan suspended a series of upcoming meetings with Pakistan due to what it called the "violent policies" of the Pakistan military and intelligence services.

Karzai said Pakistani agents were involved in recent violence in Afghanistan, including last week's attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul which left 58 people dead.

"Such baseless accusations serve no purpose other than vitiating the bilateral atmosphere and creating an artificial crisis in Pak-Afghan relations," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday in response to the allegations.

The ministry went on to say, "the decision by the Afghan Cabinet to suspend important forthcoming bilateral and regional meetings on such flimsy grounds ignores the importance of economic cooperation to the improvement in the overall living conditions of the people of Afghanistan (and) that has implications for the overall security situation as well."

Western diplomats based in Islamabad told CBS News the cross border tension presents a major dilemma for U.S. policy, as the Bush administration tries to get the two countries to cooperate in the war on terror.

In seven years since the U.S. toppled the Taliban regime and installed Karzai as its frontline ally in Afghanistan, U.S. officials have consistently worked to bring Afghanistan and Pakistan closer to each other, without much success.

While Pakistani leaders have said repeatedly that they seek closer ties with their neighbor, their claims have been questioned due to growing activity by Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban, who have used Pakistan's tribal areas along the border as staging grounds to launch attacks on Afghan and Western troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistan officials claim they have made repeated efforts to secure their side of the border, but they need further resources, including sophisticated technology.

"We have deployed maybe 150,000 soldiers to guard this 1,500 mile border. But plugging every hole in the border is just impossible," a Pakistani security official told CBS News on condition of anonymity. In the past, Pakistani officials have asked Washington to provide them with high tech equipment for monitoring the border.

A senior Western diplomat based in Islamabad, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told CBS, "with more and more people getting killed in Afghanistan, the big danger is that the U.S. and others (Western countries) will one day loose their patience. Do we then ask ourselves, 'is it time to physically go into Pakistan's border areas and take charge ourselves?'"

On Saturday, Admiral Mike Mullen, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Pakistan unannounced. He met with a number of Pakistani officials, notably General Ashfaq Kiyani, the Pakistani army chief.

While no official announcement was made by either side, except for confirmation of the one day trip, Pakistani and Western officials said Mullen may have come to deliver a firm warning that Washington expected to see a greater effort by Pakistan against Islamic militants in the border region.
By Farhan Bokhari