WASHINGTON, July 30: President George W. Bush told Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and members of his delegation during their formal meeting here on Monday that the US believed that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency had established deep ties with militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, some officials present at the meeting told Dawn on Wednesday.

Although Mr Bush was in a good mood when he met the delegation, he was blunt about expressing American reluctance to share intelligence information with Pakistan, said one official at the meeting.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a CIA “emissary” travelled to Islamabad with evidence showing that members of “ISI had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian embassy in Kabul.”

But on the PBS TV programme, ‘The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer’, Prime Minister Gilani rejected as “not believable” any assertions of ISI’s links with the militants.

“We would not allow that,” he said.