The head of the Pakistani military has met his senior commanders to discuss the security situation as the war of words with the United States escalates, army sources said.

General Ashfaq Kayani met corps commanders in the capital, Islamabad, on Sunday days after Admiral Mike Mullen, the chief of the US military, accused Pakistan's spy agency of backing the Haqqani group.

Washington blames the group, an Afghan outfit, for the recent attack on its embassy and other targets in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Without giving further details, Major-General Athar Abbas, the army spokesman, said: "The prevailing security situation was discussed."

The US and Pakistan have been in a war of words over alliances

Sources said the meeting was "special" and that Kayani, who was scheduled to depart for London later on Sunday to address the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Royal College of Defence Studies, chaired it.

Separately, General James N. Mattis, the US central command (CENTCOM) commander, met Khalid Shameem Wynne, chairman of Pakistan's Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, who expressed concern over the "negative statements emanating from [the] US".

"He [Wynne] stressed upon addressing the irritants in relationship which are a result of an extremely complex situation," the military said in a statement.


In the most blunt remarks by a US official since Pakistan joined the US-led war on terror in 2001, Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, testified before the US Senate that the Haqqani network was a "veritable arm" of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).


Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani brigadier, said the US was having difficulty defeating terror networks.

"The fact is the US in Afghanistan is failing. I think that fact is pretty obvious to everybody. The Taliban shouldn't be gaining ground everyday," he told Al Jazeera.

"And the all-mighty, all-powerful US cannot fail against a ragtag force of the Taliban for God's sake. So there has to be something behind that."

'Policy disarray'

The Pakistani government and its army rejected Mullen's charges and Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, spoke to political leaders by telephone on Sunday and decided to call a meeting to discuss the issue of tensions with the US.

On Saturday night, Gilani rejected the allegations as a sign of US "confusion and policy disarray".

Mark Kimmitt, a former assistant secretary of state, said quiet diplomacy and talks between the two countries' militaries to "wean the ISI away from dealing with terrorist organisations" has been going on for years.

"But this incident, where there's a link between the Haqqani network and the attacks on the US embassy, crossed a red line - and that's why the normal dialogue between the two countries had to be ramped up a bit to ensure that this is irresponsible and we'll not tolerate it," he said.

Hina Rabbani Khar, the Pakistani foreign minister, told Washington on Friday that it risked losing an ally if it kept accusing Islamabad of playing a double game in the war against terror.

Relations between the US and Pakistan have been strained since the US forces' killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in an unannounced raid in May.

Abbas acknowledged that army's directorate of the ISI maintained contacts with the Haqqani network, but said that did not mean it backed it.

"No intelligence agency can afford to shut the last door of contact," he told the Reuters news agency.


The Haqqani network is the most violent and effective faction among Afghanistan's Taliban fighters.

Although Pakistan officially withdrew support for the Taliban after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 and allied itself with Washington's "war on terrorism", analysts say elements of the ISI refused to make the doctrinal shift.

A US senator said Washington would have to get tougher in confronting Pakistani support for terror networks.

"We need to put Pakistan on notice," Lindsey Graham, a Republican member of the Senate's armed services committee, said.



Source: Al Jazeera and agencies