America's most senior military officer has claimed Pakistan's powerful intelligence service provided support for a group that attacked the US embassy in Kabul last week.
Describing the Haqqani militant network is a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, Admiral Mike Mullen told a US senate panel of the connection.
"The Haqqani network ... acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency," Admiral Mullen, who steps down this month as chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said in prepared remarks to a US senate panel.
The Haqqani network is one of three - and perhaps the most feared - allied insurgent factions fighting US-led Nato and Afghan troops under the Taliban banner in Afghanistan.
"With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted a (September 11th) truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy," Admiral Mullen said. "We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the June 28 attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations."
Such high-profile attacks have been a blow to Washington's hopes to weaken a stubborn militancy and seal a peace deal with the Taliban as it plans to gradually draw down the US force 10 years after the Afghan war began.
Some US intelligence reporting alleges that the ISI specifically directed or urged the Haqqani network to carry out the attack last week on the US embassy and a Nato headquarters in Kabul, two US officials and a source familiar with recent US-Pakistan official contacts told Reuters yesterday.
Admiral Mullen said the embassy attack and this week's bombing that killed the former Afghan president, who personified hopes for brokering peace negotiations with the Taliban, were examples of the Taliban's shift toward high-profile violence.
"These acts of violence are as much about headlines and playing on the fears of a traumatised people, as they are about inflicting casualties - maybe even more so," Admiral Mullen told the senate panel.
"We must not misconstrue them. They are serious and significant in shaping perceptions but they do not represent a sea change in the odds of military success."
Reuters