In Sign of Unraveling Ties, Officials Seek Signs of Spy Agency Role in Kabul Siege.
WASHINGTON
U.S. officials say they are looking for evidence that directly links elements of Pakistan's powerful spy agency to this week's assault on the U.S. Embassy and coalition headquarters in Kabul, a sign of just how rancorous relations have become between the two allies in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The American suspicions are being partly fueled by growing concerns that deteriorating bilateral relations, and
the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, may be pushing elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency to more closely embrace the Haqqani network, the Taliban faction blamed for this week's violence and a spate of attacks in and around Kabul.
Neither the ISI nor the Pakistani military, of which the spy agency is part, immediately responded to the U.S. suspicions. Pakistani government officials dismissed the suspicions as insulting and unfair.
Afghan officials say mobile phones found on the slain attackers in this week's commando-style raid in Kabul indicate they were in contact with people from "outside Afghanistan"a typical Afghan way of indirectly pointing to Pakistan.
In those and other cases, U.S. officials said that communications intercepts and other intelligence directly linked the ISI to the attacks. Yet it took months to reach that conclusion and publicize it.
What is different this time is the speed with which some U.S. officials publicly said they were exploring ISI links, a sign of the growing frustration of U.S. officials who in recent months have become more public in their finger-pointing at Pakistan for its coordination with Islamist militant groups.
The possibility of ISI involvement was already being considered within hours of the attack's conclusion when President Barack Obama's National Security Council met Wednesday, said a U.S. official.
"The level of patience has just gone out the window," said Seth Jones, a political scientist at the Rand Corp., who has spent much of the past two years working with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. "People aren't keeping it inside anymore and containing it in a circle that, for a while, was just private."
Pakistan, for its part, says the ISI long ago severed ties with the Haqqanis. Government officials in Islamabad bristled at the suggestion their country had any role in the attack or that its territory was used to orchestrate the violence.
A spokeswoman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry, Tehmina Janjua, said in a statement Thursday that Mr. Panetta's remarks about the Haqqani network were "out of line with the cooperation that exists between the two countries in the war against terrorism."
Pakistan has used groups such as the Haqqanis, the Taliban and others to secure its interests in Afghanistan, officials say, and keep regional rival India, with a far larger conventional military, at bay.
This week's, attacks, however, targeted the U.S. The fighting started Tuesday afternoon when militants began firing rocket-propelled grenades at the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy, the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition and other targets.
A direct attack on an American embassy "isn't something we can treat as business-as-usual," said the U.S. defense official. Even if no ISI link is found, the Pakistani relationship with the Haqqanis is "long past unacceptable," the official said.