US accuses Pakistan of supporting Taliban, Qaeda

Senior United States military generals accused Pakistan's military intelligence agency late Friday of providing support to Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters across the country's western and eastern borders.

U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Mullen said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had links to al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters on both its western border with Afghanistan and its eastern border with India.

"There are certainly indications that's the case," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen told CNN when asked if elements of Pakistan's spy agency were backing the al-Qaeda network and its Taliban allies.

Admiral Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said the agency must end such activities.

"Fundamentally, the strategic approach with the ISI must change and their support ... for militants, actually on both borders, has to fundamentally shift," he said.

Pakistan's ISI has been widely accused of refusing to sever its links with Islamist groups that date back to the Cold War and the U.S.-backed fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

Fundamentally, the strategic approach with the ISI must change

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen

Petraeus, speaking on PBS television's 'Newshour' program, noted some militant groups were established by the ISI, with U.S. funding, with the aim of helping drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

"Those links were very strong and some of them, I think, unquestionably . . . do remain, to this day. It is much more difficult to tell at what level those links are still established," he said.

Petraeus added there were some cases "in the fairly recent past" in which the ISI appeared to have warned militants that their location was discovered.

"It's a topic that is of enormous importance, because if there are links and if those continue and if it undermines the operations, obviously that would be very damaging to the kind of trust that we need to build," he explained.

General Petraeus said the U.S. and Pakistan viewed militant groups differently, and that Pakistan focused on those it saw as the biggest threats to its security, while overlooking some groups with a higher U.S. priority.

"Our intelligence shows that these groups also threaten them, so we are asking them to be a little bit more enlightened, to rethink their security calculus in a way that we think is consistent with ours," he said.

The officers made their remarks as President Barak Obama's administration unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that promises more aid for Pakistan but seeks increased cooperation in the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in return.

Asked about what leverage the U.S. had over Pakistan, Adm. Mullen suggested that the aid Washington was offering might be linked to progress in fighting insurgents.

"There are linkages between support, aid, whatever the case might be, that I think we need to evaluate in terms of that assistance," he said.

if there are links and if those continue and if it undermines the operations, obviously that would be very damaging to the kind of trust that we need to build

General David Petraeus