WASHINGTON, Sept 28: Officials within the Obama administration are unhappy with Admiral Mike Mullen’s assertion that the Haqqani network is a “veritable arm” of the ISI, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The outgoing US military chief also told a congressional hearing last week that he had evidence that the ISI encouraged recent attacks on the US Embassy and Nato headquarters in Kabul.

The Post, however, reported that not all in the Obama administration were happy with the admiral’s approach. Officials who spoke to the Post also expressed concern about the accuracy of his claims.

“Such interpretations prompted new levels of indignation among senior officials in both the United States and Pakistan,” the Post noted.

Mr Mullen’s language “overstates the case”, said a senior Pentagon official with access to classified intelligence files on Pakistan, because “there is scant evidence of direction or control”.

“If anything the intelligence indicates that Pakistan treads a delicate if duplicitous line, providing support to insurgent groups including the Haqqani network but avoiding actions that would provoke a US response,” the Post reported.

“The Pakistani government has been dealing with Haqqani for a long time and still sees strategic value in guiding Haqqani and using them for their purposes,” the Pentagon official said. But “it’s not in their interest to inflame us in a way that an attack on a (US) compound would do”.

A senior aide to Admiral Mullen, however, told the Post that the chairman’s testimony, which was designed to prod the Pakistanis to sever ties with the Haqqani group if not contain it by force. “I don’t think the Pakistani reaction was unexpected,” said Capt John Kirby. “The chairman stands by every word of his testimony.”

But the difficulty in matching his words to the underlying intelligence underscore the suspicion and distrust that have plagued the US-Pakistan relations since 9/11, the Post noted.

US military officials said that Mr Mullen’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee had been misinterpreted, and that his remark that the Haqqani network had carried out recent truck-bomb and embassy attacks “with ISI support” was meant to imply broad assistance, but not necessarily direction by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

The Post, however, noted that saying that the Haqqani network “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency”, a phrase implied ISI’s involvement and control.

That interpretation might be valid “if we were judging by Western standards”, said a senior US military official who defended Mr Mullen’s testimony. But the Pakistanis “use extremist groups — not only the Haqqanis — as proxies and hedges” to maintain influence in Afghanistan.

“This is not new,” the official said. “Can they control them like a military unit? We don’t think so. Do they encourage them? Yes. Do they provide some finance for them? Yes. Do they provide safe havens? Yes.”

But the Post pointed out that “that nuance escaped many in Congress and even some in the Obama administration, who voiced concern that the escalation in rhetoric had inflamed anti-American sentiment in Pakistan”.

US officials told the Post that even evidence that has surfaced since Mr Mullen’s testimony was open to differences in interpretation, including cellphones recovered from gunmen who were killed during the assault on the US Embassy.

One official said the phones were used to make repeated calls to numbers associated with the Haqqani network, as well as presumed “ISI operatives”. But the official declined to explain the basis for that conclusion.

The senior Pentagon official who spoke to the Post treated the assertion with scepticism, saying the term “operatives” covered a wide range of supposed associates of the ISI.