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Pakistan vows to investigate ISI

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, right, shakes hands with Nepali Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala during a meeting in Colombo yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

Pakistan will investigate claims that its intelligence service was involved in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan last month that killed 41 people.

The promise was made by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in Colombo, where he is attending a South Asian leaders’ summit, India’s Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters.

Gilani also agreed to discuss the issue yesterday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the sidelines of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation summit, which is discussing cooperation in fighting terrorism among several issues, Menon said on Saturday.

Gilani and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met in the Sri Lankan capital on Saturday to check the slide in their relations amid tensions over the attack on the Indian embassy on July 7 and clashes between their armies across the border dividing disputed Kashmir.

Accusations that Pakistan helped a militant group bomb India’s embassy in Afghanistan cast a cloud over the summit gathering.

Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of backing the Taliban-led insurgency wracking the country.

On Saturday, Gilani told reporters that if Karzai provided any evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the attack on the Indian embassy, he would order an independent inquiry.

He also asked the Indian side to share any information it had to substantiate its charge that elements in Pakistan were behind the blast at the Indian embassy, the Indian foreign secretary said.

The New York Times, citing unnamed US government officials, reported on Friday that US intelligence agencies have concluded that members of the powerful ISI were involved in the embassy attack. Pakistan dismissed the report as “rubbish.”

Gilani also said any misunderstanding that impeded good relations with India should be removed.

Relations between the longtime rivals have been on the mend since 2004 when they began talks on their competing claims to the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

But India has also accused Pakistan of violating a ceasefire accord along the boundary that divides Kashmir between them. Indian and Pakistani forces traded gunfire in recent days along the heavily fortified frontier in the worst violation of a 2003 ceasefire agreement between the neighbors.
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