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Pakistan's government is denying it played a role in Monday's suicide
bomb attack on India's embassy in Afghanistan. But Afghan officials
say it is "pretty obvious" who was behind the attack. VOA's Barry
Newhouse reports from Islamabad.
A day after a massive
suicide car bomb attack killed more than 40 people and wounded scores
more outside India's diplomatic mission in Kabul, a spokesman for
President Hamid Karzai said investigators believe that a foreign
intelligence agency was behind it.
Humayun Hamidzada said that
although the investigation is still continuing, officials believe they
already have evidence that the attack had significant foreign support.
"The
sophistication of this attack and the kind of material that was used in
it and the specific targeting - everything has the hallmark of a
particular intelligence agency that has conducted similar terrorist
acts inside Afghanistan in the past," he said.
In
June, Afghan officials accused Pakistan's spy agency of being directly
involved in April's assassination attempt against President Karzai.
But at a news conference in Kabul, Hamidzada refused to directly blame
Pakistan in the bombing targeting its historical rival India.
"We
believe firmly that there is a particular intelligence agency behind
it. I am not going to name it anymore. I think it is pretty obvious," he said.
Pakistani
officials have strongly denied the government was involved in the
Karzai assassination attempt or the Indian embassy bombing. The head
of Pakistan's Interior Ministry, Rehman Malik, told a group of
reporters in Islamabad that no part of the government played any role
in the bombing.
He
said Pakistan does not involve itself in such acts because it is not in
its interest. He said that for Pakistanis, a safe Afghanistan is a
guarantee for a safe Pakistan.
Pakistan's top intelligence
agency, called the ISI, had fostered close ties with Afghanistan's
Taliban government until 2001. Pakistan officially turned against its
ally before the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Since then Pakistan
has been praised as a partner in the war against terrorism.
But
in recent years, continuing attacks by Taliban militants in Afghanistan
and Pakistan have strained relations between the two countries and
raised questions about whether Pakistan's intelligence agency truly cut
all ties with its former Taliban allies.
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