Pakistan denies Afghan charges

Pakistan, in a strongly-worded statement, rejected Afghanistan's claims its spy agency was involved in former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani's killing. The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry said Islamabad "strongly rejects the baseless allegations of the Afghan interior minister" about the involvement of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency in the assassination last month of Rabbani, who had headed the Afghan High Peace Council to negotiate talks with the Taliban. The ministry's statement said Rabbani was "a great friend" who had lived in Pakistan for a long time. "The so-called evidence given to the Pakistan Embassy in Kabul is actually a confessional statement of an Afghan national Hamidullah Akundzadeh accused of master-minding the assassination. The concerned authority will work upon this piece of information," the statement said. "Instead of making such irresponsible statements, those in positions of authority in Kabul, should seriously deliberate as to why all those Afghans who are favorably disposed towards peace and towards Pakistan are systematically being removed from the scene and killed." Pakistan is under pressure from the United States that its ISI must cut off its ties to the violent Haqqani Network, which is linked to the Afghan Taliban and which is seen as using its safe havens in Pakistan to launch attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. On the Rabbani assassination, Afghan officials say they have provided evidence to Islamabad that it was planned in Quetta, Pakistan, home to the Quetta Shura or the Taliban leadership, the Los Angeles Times reported. An Afghan commission investigating the assassination said Sunday the killer was a resident of Chaman in Pakistan. Separately, addressing a meeting in Multan Saturday, Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, while commenting on the Rabbani killing, said: ""Pakistanis are a self-respecting nation. Pakistan neither interferes in anyone's affairs nor allows anyone's interference in our affairs," the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.