KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government for the first time publicly accused the Pakistani intelligence service on Wednesday of organizing the failed plot to assassinate President Hamid Karzai at a parade in Kabul in April.
In a news conference in Kabul, Sayeed Ansari, the spokesman for the Afghan intelligence service, said Afghan authorities had evidence of the direct involvement of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, in the assassination attempt.
He said the evidence consisted of documents uncovered during the investigation into the assassination attempt, confessions from 16 suspects detained after the attack and cellphone contacts. He gave no further details or names of officials within the Pakistani agency who might have been involved.
“Based on the investigation of the case and documents we found, as well as confessions by suspects we arrested, they show that the real schemers and organizers of the terrorist attack” on the celebratory parade on April 27 “is the intelligence organization of Pakistan, ISI, and its associates, which committed unforgivable crimes.”
There was no immediate public response from Pakistan, and spokesmen for the ISI and the Foreign Ministry did not return telephone calls for comment. The accusation is by far the most serious one leveled by Afghanistan against its neighbor.
Tensions between the countries have been rising. Last week, Mr. Karzai threatened to send soldiers into Pakistan to fight Islamic militant groups operating in the border areas to attack Afghanistan.
Mr. Karzai has said that he regards the Pakistani government as a friendly government, but in an escalating war of words he has urged it to join Afghanistan and allied nations to fight those who want to destabilize both countries, and to “cut the hand” that is feeding the militants.
The comments on Wednesday are the first in which Afghan authorities have made specific and public allegations that the ISI was involved in the attack on Mr. Karzai.
The Afghan intelligence service had already said that three of the people involved in the attack were in contact with people outside Afghanistan, including people in Miram Shah, a town in Pakistan’s tribal region of North Waziristan, the main base for the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the region.
The three, who were killed in a house raid in Kabul in the days after the assassination attempt, included an Afghan named Homayoun, suspected of directing an attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul in January, and a second Afghan man and a foreign woman who were planning suicide bombings in the city. In the past, Afghan intelligence officials had linked Homayoun through an intermediary to Jalaladdin Haqqani, a mujahedeen commander who is based in Pakistan’s tribal areas and has long had ties to Al Qaeda.
In the news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Ansari said cellphones belonging to the three recovered after their deaths yielded phone numbers with Pakistani codes. The numbers showed “a direct link” between Homayoun and the Pakistani intelligence organization, he said.
“We don’t guess about the involvement of ISI; we are saying it precisely,” he said. The well-coordinated attempt on Mr. Karzai’s life took place at the Afghan National Day military parade in central Kabul. Mr. Karzai escaped unhurt, but three people were killed in the assault: a tribal chief and a member of Parliament who were in the reviewing stands near Mr. Karzai, and a 10-year-old boy.
Shortly after the attack, Afghan officials suggested that the attempt to kill Mr. Karzai was the work of militants who had infiltrated Afghanistan’s security forces and had ties to groups linked to Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The officials said that militants linked to Al Qaeda and based in Pakistan were working closely with the Taliban to threaten the Karzai government, bringing a new level of sophistication to attacks in and around the capital.
The assassination attempt sent government officials, diplomats and legislators scrambling for cover and caused a stampede of soldiers from the parade ground.
Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, and Graham Bowley from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/world/asia/26afghan.html?em&ex=1214539200&en=f3daa11f6c1bd468&ei=5087%0A |
