Pakistan condemns leak on Taliban aid

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Pakistan on Wednesday hit out angrily at a leaked NATO report accusing its spies of secretly aiding the Afghan Taliban that are set to retake control over Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country.

The report seen by The Times newspaper and the BBC was compiled from information gleaned from insurgent detainees and was given to NATO commanders in Afghanistan last month, the media reports said.

The leaked NATO document claims that Islamabad, via Pakistan's security agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is "intimately involved" with the insurgency and that the Taliban assume victory is inevitable once Western troops leave in 2014.

The BBC said the report was based on material from 27,000 interrogations of more than 4,000 captured Taliban and al-Qaida operatives. Taliban captives said Islamabad was using a web of intermediaries and spies to provide strategic advice to the Taliban on fighting US and NATO troops.

"Pakistan's manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly," the report was quoted as saying.

"This is frivolous, to put it mildly. We are committed to non-interference in Afghanistan and expect all other states to strictly adhere to this principle," Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP.

"They (the Taliban) don't need any backing. Everybody knows that after 10 years, they (NATO) have not been able to control a single province in Afghanistan because of the wrong policies they have been following," Pakistani Senator Tariq Azim, a member of the Senate's Defense Committee, told Reuters.

"We have not seen the report, and therefore cannot offer comment on it specifically," said Pentagon spokesman George Little. "We have long been concerned about ties between elements of the ISI and some extremist networks".

Little said US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "has also been clear that he believes that the safe havens in Pakistan remain a serious problem and need to be addressed by Pakistani authorities".

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Lee Hannon is Chief Editor at China Daily with 15-years experience in print and broadcast journalism. Born in England, Lee has traveled extensively around the world as a journalist including four years as a senior editor in Los Angeles. He now lives in Beijing and is happy to move to China and join the China Daily team.