ISLAMABAD, May 10: Pakistan said on Friday that a tense military standoff with India was compromising its efforts to secure its western borders against Al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives fleeing Afghanistan.

Presidential spokesman Major-General Rashid Qureshi said he suspected Indian intelligence agencies might have been behind Wednesday’s bomb attack in Karachi, which killed 14 people including 11 French navy experts helping to build submarines.

He appealed for international pressure on India to pull back hundreds of thousands of troops stationed along the Pakistani border since tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours escalated sharply last December.

“We are being distracted in the war against terrorism on our western border with Afghanistan, which we are not able to seal as effectively as we would like,” he told Reuters, explaining that Pakistan had to divide its forces between east and west.

“The United States and the western world need to tell India to back off,” he said by telephone.

Pakistan has become a key ally in the US war on terrorism since Sept 11 and is cooperating with American forces in the hunt for fugitives from the Afghanistan’s overthrown Taliban government and their Al Qaeda allies.

But President Musharraf’s friendliness with Washington has angered some religious activists at home, and there have been fears of a militant backlash targeting foreigners in Pakistan.

INDIAN HAND:Qureshi said suspicion for this week’s suicide attack had fallen either on Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, blamed by Washington for the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, or on Pakistan’s neighbour India.

“We are also looking at a foreign country’s involvement,” he told Reuters, referring to India. “It seems a very, very considered choice of target, a target not well known. There is a suspicion that foreign intelligence agencies could be involved, as it related to the defence production of Pakistan.”

India on Wednesday denied similar Pakistan allegations.

“We treat it with the disdain it fully deserves,” Indian foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao told reporters.

“It is totally and completely baseless. As usual, they are a shining example of Pakistan’s fabrication.”

Qureshi said India was trying to undermine Pakistan’s economy and was unhappy about the way the Musharraf government has become more acceptable internationally since Sept 11.—Reuters