ISLAMABAD — The U.S. ambassador to Islamabad said in remarks broadcast Saturday that there is evidence linking the Haqqani insurgent network to the Pakistani government, a charge that could raise tensions in an already strained alliance between Washington and Islamabad.
The U.S. and NATO blame the Haqqani network for many of the attacks in Afghanistan, including last week’s strike on the U.S. Embassy. The group — affiliated with both the Taliban and al-Qaeda — and its army of several thousand fighters is widely assumed to be based just over the Afghan border in Pakistan.
U.S. officials have long suspected links between the Pakistan military and the Haqqani network. But needing Pakistani cooperation to beat al-Qaeda and stabilize Afghanistan, they rarely say so publicly and as directly as Ambassador Cameron Munter did in an interview with Radio Pakistan.
