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Pakistan denies spies behind Indian embassy attack

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-01 19:29

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan angrily rejected a New York Times report on Friday that said US intelligence agencies have concluded members of Pakistan's spy agency helped plan the suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul this month.

The site of a suicide attack in front of The Indian Embassy in Kabul on July 7. [Agencies]

"We reject it. No one has given any evidence to us. It's just an allegation," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said.

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"There's no proof for this," he siad from Colombo, Sri Lanka, where South Asian leaders were meeting for a regional summit.

The New York Times this week reported that a senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) confronted Pakistan earlier this month with evidence of ties of members of its Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) with al Qaeda-linked militants and their involvement in the Kabul bomb attack.

Two senior Indian diplomats were among 58 people killed in the July 7 attacks.

The newspaper reported on Thursday that unnamed US government officials said communications had been intercepted between Pakistani agents and militants who carried out the attack.

Pakistani Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, in remarks aired by Pakistan television channel on Thursday, said US officials had accused ISI members of tipping off al Qaeda-linked militants before US missile attacks on targets in Pakistani tribal lands.

Pakistan's new Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who returned from his first visit to the United States on Thursday, was due to meet his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh in Colombo on Saturday.

The meeting of the two leaders is taking place against the backdrop of strained relations between the two countries.

The Kabul attack, breaches of a 2003 ceasefire between Indian and Pakistan forces in the disputed Kashmir region, and media speculation of some Pakistani links to a series of bomb attacks on Indian cities have all contributed the worsening atmosphere.

India said the 4 year-old peace process was "under stress" following the attack on its Kabul embassy.