ISLAMABAD, April 5: Pakistan on Thursday rejected a US media report that it was secretly aiding a militant group for attacks across the border in Iran as “tendentious”, the Foreign Office said.

“The Foreign Office takes serious note of the tendentious ABC News report alleging that a group called ‘Jundullah (Soldier of God)’ was operating from inside Pakistan to carry out raids across the border into Iran,” an official statement said.

It described as an “absurd and sinister insinuation” that Pakistan was part of a “secret campaign” against Iran.

A report on the website of US channel ABC News on Wednesday said US officials had secretly encouraged and advised a Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for several deadly attacks inside Iran.

It added that Jundullah comprised members of the Baloch tribe and operated out of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province.

The report quoted Pakistani tribal sources as saying that money for the group was funnelled to its young leader Abd el Malik Regi through Iranian exiles who had connections with European and Gulf states.

It quoted Pakistani government sources as saying that the campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice-President Dick Cheney met President Gen Pervez Musharraf in February.

A senior US government official said groups like Jundullah had been “helpful” in tracking Al Qaeda militants and that it was appropriate for the US to deal with such groups in that context, the report said. But the Foreign Office denied the report.

“Pakistan will never allow its territory for carrying out acts of terrorism and violence against any country,” it said.

“Pakistan has active cooperation with Iran to curb any criminal and terrorist activity by any group, including so-called Jundullah,” it said.

“Pakistan and Iran enjoy close friendly relations and we condemn any attempt to create misgivings between the two brotherly countries.” Jundullah recently took credit for a car bomb in Zahedan, capital of the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan bordering Pakistan, in which 13 Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed.

Iran had summoned Pakistan’s ambassador after the unrest last month and both sides had agreed to tighten border security.

Pakistani agents on March 23 recovered three Iranian police who had been kidnapped by the same group and handed them back to authorities in Iran, while a fourth was believed to have been killed.

A videotape attributed to Jundullah and aired on Al-Arabiya television on March 8 purportedly showed the men on their knees, while two masked gunmen stood behind them.

Meanwhile, commenting on the US media report at a press conference in Islamabad on Thursday, Iran’s consultative assembly speaker Dr Gholam Ali Hadded Adel said the US spared no effort to put pressure on Iran. He, however, said there was no evidence or reason to believe that Pakistan’s military establishment was abetting terrorists.

—AFP