Updated on
Summary Pakistans army disputed reports that its forces had tipped off insurgents at bomb-making factories.
The Foreign Ministry also lodged a protest with the American embassy over a purported attack on a Pakistani military post the latest signs of strained relations since the US killed Osama bin Laden last month without notifying officials here ahead of time.The army called the assertions of collusion with militants “totally false and malicious.” American officials had said that they’d shared satellite information with Pakistan about two militant bomb-making factories. Within 24 hours, they said they watched the militants clear out the sites, raising suspicions that the Pakistanis had shared the information.In a carefully worded, two-paragraph statement Friday, the army never says the US shared intelligence on the sites in question. But it said its attempts to destroy four militant bomb-making factories only partly succeeded because intelligence on two of the sites was wrong.It also was unclear about the sites’ exact location and does not say when the raids occurred. But it’s likely to further add to tensions between the US and Pakistan, which have been unusually high since the US raid that killed bin Laden.Various media accounts said the factories were in the Waziristan stretch of Pakistan’s tribal belt, where al-Qaida and Taliban fighters have long proliferated. The intelligence sharing was part of a US attempt to improve the relationship with Pakistan.Bin Laden’s presence there has only added to US suspicions that elements within Pakistan’s powerful security establishment were playing a “double game” by colluding with some militants while going after others.
