Pakistan rejects claim of ISI role in Afghan’s assassination

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday strongly rejected claims that the nation’s premier spy agency was involved in the assassination of Afghanistan’s chief negotiator with the Taliban.

Afghan and U.S. officials have been increasing pressure on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, to sever its ties with the Haqqani network, an affiliate of the Afghan Taliban regarded by Washington as the most dangerous security threat to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Afghan officials have said that the ISI played a role in the Sept. 20 assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president who was tapped by President Hamid Karzai to lead negotiations with the Afghan Taliban to end the country’s 10-year conflict.

This weekend, Afghan Interior Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi told the Afghan parliament that the ISI was involved in Rabbani’s assassination.

On Sunday, Pakistani officials dismissed Mohammadi’s allegations as “baseless.”

“The Afghan interior minister’s statement is all the more regrettable, as [Pakistani] Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had himself offered cooperation in the investigation,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “There is a need to take stock of the direction taken by Afghan intelligence and security agencies.”

Afghan officials said they have given officials in Islamabad evidence that Rabbani’s assassination had been planned in the southern city of Quetta, which Afghan and U.S. officials have long claimed is home to the Afghan Taliban leadership group known as the Quetta Shura. On Sunday, an Afghan commission investigating Rabbani’s slaying said the assassin was a Pakistani man from Chaman, a Pakistani town on the Afghan border.

Many analysts believe Pakistan has balked at cooperating with calls to go after Haqqani militants based in the country’s tribal areas because it sees Haqqani and Afghan Taliban leaders as a valuable hedge against future Indian influence in Kabul once the U.S. withdraws its forces in 2014. Pakistan has always regarded nuclear archrival India as its paramount threat.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a roadside bomb killed nine Afghan army soldiers late Saturday in a patrol convoy in Gardez, capital of the eastern province of Paktia, said Rohullah Samoon, spokesman for the Paktia governor. The blast also injured four soldiers.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

Rodriguez reported from Islamabad and special correspondent Yaqubi from Kabul.