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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani vowed to defeat terrorism and rejected the notion of Islamabad “not doing enough” in the anti-Taliban fight, the military said on Thursday.
His comments followed remarks by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, accusing Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of having ties with Afghan Taliban in Pakistan's northwest tribal belt.
The White House also criticised Pakistan's efforts to defeat the Taliban operating on the border in a report this month refuted by Islamabad.
The army chief “strongly rejected negative propaganda of Pakistan not doing enough and Pakistan army's lack of clarity on the way forward,” the military said in a statement, a day after Mullen met top generals in Islamabad.
Kayani said that the “army's ongoing operations are a testimony of our national resolve to defeat terrorism”, according to the statement.
In an interview with private TV channel Geo, Mullen - the highest ranking officer in the US armed forces - said: “ISI has a long standing relationship with the Haqqani network, that does not mean everybody in ISI but it is there.”
The statement did not mention the Haqqani network.
The army defended its stance against terrorism in general and acknowledged that a “trust deficit between the institutions as well as the people” existed between the US and Pakistan.
But Kayani and Mullen re-stated their aims of building “reciprocal respect towards each other's sovereignty” and the statement said “security ties will not be allowed to unravel between the two armed forces”.
The Haqqani network is an al-Qaeda-allied organisation run by Afghan warlord Sirajuddin Haqqani and based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal district.
The group has been blamed for some of the deadliest anti-US attacks in Afghanistan, including a suicide attack at a US base in Khost in 2009 that killed seven CIA operatives.
Kayani said public support was key to success in the war against terrorism but said that controversial US drone strikes “not only undermine our national effort against terrorism but also turn public support against our efforts”.
Mullen's trip is the latest shuttle diplomacy mission after a fatal shooting by a CIA contractor in January triggered a row between the US and Pakistan over intelligence sharing and raised tensions over the controversial US drone war.
In recent weeks, however, Kayani has spoken out against the strikes. In mid-March, he issued a strong statement denouncing on such attack after it killed nearly 40 people. While the US insisted the group consisted of militants, Kayani said dozens of mostly innocent tribesmen died.
That strike came the day after the US secured the release of American CIA contractor Raymond Davis by paying the families of the two shooting victims’ so-called “blood money.” The Davis case badly strained relations, with Pakistan refusing to take a stand on whether Davis had diplomatic immunity from prosecution as the US embassy claimed.
