Pakistan denies army major’s arrest for CIA links

Pakistan’s Noor Bibi, sec­ond from right, shows pic­tures of her hus­band and son whom she alleges were picked up by secu­rity agen­cies last week as she sits with uniden­ti­fied fam­ily mem­bers in Abbot­tabad, Pak­istan Wednes­day. She lives in a house adja­cent to the Osama’s com­pound in Abbot­tabad. The Pak­istani army denied that one of its majors was among a group of Pak­ista­nis who West­ern offi­cials say were arrested for feed­ing the CIA infor­ma­tion before the Amer­i­can raid that killed Osama bin Laden. (Asso­ci­ated press | Aqeel Ahmed)

KIMBERLY DOZIER

MUNIR AHMED

Asso­ci­ated Press

ISLAMABAD — The Pak­istani army denied Wednes­day that one of its majors was among a group of Pak­ista­nis who West­ern offi­cials say were arrested for feed­ing the CIA infor­ma­tion before the Amer­i­can raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The New York Times, which first reported the arrests of five Pak­istani infor­mants Tues­day, said an army major was detained who copied license plates of cars vis­it­ing the al-Qaida chief’s com­pound in Pak­istan in the weeks before the raid.

A West­ern offi­cial in Pak­istan con­firmed that five Pak­ista­nis who fed infor­ma­tion to the CIA before the May 2 oper­a­tion were arrested by Pakistan’s top intel­li­gence service.

But Pak­istani army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas denied an army major was arrested, say­ing the report was “false and totally base­less.” Nei­ther the army nor Pakistan’s spy agency would con­firm or deny the over­all report about the detentions.

The group of detained Pak­ista­nis included the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe bin Laden’s com­pound in Abbot­tabad, an army town not far from the Pak­istani cap­i­tal of Islam­abad, a U.S. offi­cial said. The owner was detained along with a “hand­ful” of other Pak­ista­nis, said the official.

The West­ern offi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity to dis­cuss sen­si­tive intel­li­gence matters.

The fate of the pur­ported CIA infor­mants who were arrested was unclear, but Amer­i­can offi­cials told the Times that CIA Direc­tor Leon Panetta raised the issue when he vis­ited Islam­abad last week to meet with Pak­istani mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence officers.

U.S.-Pakistani rela­tions have been strained over the raid by Navy SEALs on Pak­istani ter­ri­tory, which embar­rassed Pakistan’s mil­i­tary, and other issues.

One of the issues that has caused ten­sion between the two coun­tries is U.S. drone mis­sile strikes tar­get­ing mil­i­tants in Pakistan’s tribal region near the Afghan border.

Three attacks on Wednes­day tar­geted sus­pected mil­i­tant com­pounds and a vehi­cles in south and north Waziris­tan tribal areas, killing at least 15 alleged insur­gents, accord­ing to Pak­istani intel­li­gence offi­cials. The offi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to talk to the media.

Pak­istani offi­cials often denounce the strikes in pub­lic, even though many are believed to sup­port them in pri­vate. That sup­port has been strained in the wake of the bin Laden raid, espe­cially since the strikes are unpop­u­lar with the Pak­istani public.

Offi­cials said the arrests of the sus­pected infor­mants was just the lat­est evi­dence of the frac­tured rela­tion­ship between the two nations.

The Times said that at a closed brief­ing last week, mem­bers of the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee asked Michael Morell, the deputy CIA direc­tor, to rate Pakistan’s coop­er­a­tion with the United States on coun­tert­er­ror­ism oper­a­tions, on a scale of 1 to 10.

“Three,” Morell replied, accord­ing to offi­cials famil­iar with the exchange, the news­pa­per said.

Amer­i­can offi­cials speak­ing to the Times cau­tioned that Morell’s com­ment was a snap­shot of the cur­rent rela­tion­ship and did not rep­re­sent the Obama administration’s over­all assessment.

“We have a strong rela­tion­ship with our Pak­istani coun­ter­parts and work through issues when they arise,” Marie Harf, a CIA spokes­woman, told the news­pa­per. “Direc­tor Panetta had pro­duc­tive meet­ings last week in Islam­abad. It’s a cru­cial part­ner­ship, and we will con­tinue to work together in the fight against al-Qaida and other ter­ror­ist groups who threaten our coun­try and theirs.”

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambas­sador to the United States, said in an inter­view with the Times that the CIA and the Pak­istani spy agency “are work­ing out mutu­ally accept­able terms for their coop­er­a­tion in fight­ing the men­ace of ter­ror­ism. It is not appro­pri­ate for us to get into the details at this stage.”

Posted by AP News on Jun 15 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.