KABUL, July 15: Afghanistan said on Monday it would boycott a series of upcoming meetings with Pakistan unless “bilateral trust” was restored after attacks it blamed on its neighbour’s intelligence and military.

The cabinet decision was announced soon after President Hamid Karzai directly accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, of a role in a series of deadly attacks, including the bombing of the Indian embassy last week.“

Pakistani agents were behind the killing of two women in Ghazni province and 24 people in a suicide bomb in Uruzgan province on Sunday, Karzai said.

“We will take revenge for these two sisters of ours very soon ... and we are telling the enemies of Afghanistan that we will protect the honour of this country,” he said.

The people of Afghanistan, the world, know very well that Pakistan’s intelligence agency and military have turned that country to the biggest exporter of terrorism and extremism to the world, particularly Afghanistan,” the cabinet said in a statement.

A cabinet meeting had decided Afghanistan was “compelled” to suspend its involvement in various bilateral and regional meetings due in Dubai, Islamabad and Kabul this month and in August, the statement said.

The reason was the “violence-seeking policies of ISI and military officials.” The suspension would hold unless “an atmosphere of bilateral trust is established,” it said.

“Every day all over our country, children, women, elders, teachers and Afghanistan’s international partners ... get killed at the hands of elements of this organisation, ISI,” the statement said.

It alleged that the ISI was responsible for “terrorist attacks” that included a suicide bombing against the Indian embassy in Kabul last week that killed 60 people and a failed assassination attempt on Karzai in April.

Other “destructive attacks are all indicators of ISI’s attempts to recapture and destroy our country,” the cabinet said.

Pakistan has firmly denied involvement in the Indian embassy attack and the wave of violence in Afghanistan, accusing Kabul of shelving its own responsibilities to fight extremist violence.—AFP

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