KABUL, June 20: Afghan authorities have arrested three Pakistanis armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades for a plot to kill US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, officials and reports said on Monday. The Pakistanis were arrested on Sunday in eastern Laghman province, where Afghan-born Khalilzad, nominated as the next US envoy to Iraq, was inaugurating reconstruction projects, intelligence officials said.

“The intelligence agents who were chasing them a day prior to their arrest recorded a tape in which they’ve confessed that they were planning to assassinate Khalilzad,” national deputy intelligence chief Abdullah Laghmanai was quoted as saying by Afghan National Television.

The trio were waiting for suicide vests packed with explosives to be shipped from Pakistan but they never arrived, so they were told to carry out the assassination with the weapons they had in hand, the report added.

It was not clear what group, if any, the Pakistanis were linked to. But a senior intelligence official said that the trio had trained in a “terrorist camp in Pakistan”.

They had been prepared to die during the attempt on Khalilzad’s life even though they were using guns and rocket launchers instead of suicide vests, the official said.

“They wouldn’t have cared if they had died in the attack,” he added.

The three men, aged between 18 and 20, appeared on Afghan television late Monday looking scared and confused and wearing white shalwar kameez, the local dress of baggy trousers and a tunic.

They were identified as Abdul Alim and Murad Khan from the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, and Zahid from Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.

Dubbed the “viceroy” of Afghanistan by critics because of his influence on the fledgling government in Kabul, Mr Khalilzad is also US President George W. Bush’s special envoy in the war-shattered country.

The US ambassador and a delegation of US embassy official “visited Laghman province on Sunday to dedicate a new provincial reconstruction team, visit an alternative livelihoods programme and address a group of provincial officials,” US embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said.

He refused to give any details of the alleged assassination attempt, saying the embassy “didn’t comment on security matters”.

Last week Mr Khalilzad reportedly said there was a good chance that the fugitive leader of Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was hiding in Pakistan, which is a key ally in the US-led “war on terror”.

He accused Islamabad of failing to act against other Taliban chiefs. However, there was no indication the Taliban were involved in the assassination plot.

Pakistan also gave a blanket denial of any involvement. “Pakistan condemns all acts of terrorism,” foreign office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani said after the three suspects were arrested.

“We are confident that the Afghan government will conduct a proper investigation in order to ascertain the identity and motive of the plotters,” he said.

Mr Jilani hit out at Mr Khalilzad’s comments at a briefing earlier on Monday.

“What baffles us is the fact that on the one hand the American administration at the highest level acknowledges and praises the role and the sacrifices made by Pakistan in its war against international terrorism, and a representative of the same government talks something entirely different,” he said.

The US military said earlier on Monday that some foreign militants were coming into Afghanistan and “trying to instill fear in this country”.

Mr Khalilzad came to Afghanistan in late 2001 and was seen as the power behind President Hamid Karzai bringing the war-ravaged country through its first post-Taliban presidential election.—AFP