Pakistan's ISI arrests five CIA informants

The report quoted unnamed US officials saying the detentions included a Pakistani Army major who had copied license numbers of vehicles visiting bin Laden's compound in the northern city of Abbottabad weeks before the May 2 raid. It characterized the arrests as further evidence of the "fractured relationship" between the US and Pakistan at a time when the administration of President Barack Obama is seeking to bolster its counterinsurgency operations in the South Asian country.

Deputy CIA director Michael Morell was quoted as telling a closed session of the US Senate Intelligence Committee last week that on a scale of one to 10, he rated Pakistan's cooperation at only 3. US officials also told the newspaper that in recent months ISI spies have resisted performing surveillance operations for the CIA, refused to grant visas to allow US intelligence officers to operate in Pakistan, as well as threatening to place more restrictions on US drone flights.

Playing down the tension

But US and Pakistani officials have also sought to play down any unease between them. Pakistan's ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani told the Times that the CIA and the ISI "are working out mutually agreeable terms for their cooperation in fighting the menace of terrorism. It is not appropriate for us to get into the details at this stage."

A Pentagon program to train Pakistani paramilitary troops to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan has also ended and US military advisers have left the country. The future of the US pilotless drones that target hideouts of alleged militants in Pakistani tribal areas near Afghanistan is now in doubt. US officials were quoted as saying Pakistan's intelligence agency is increasingly unwilling to cooperate with surveillance for the CIA operations.

Friends no more?

Analysts said the raid on bin Laden was a blow to the Pakistan military's prestige. The embarrassment was partly due to its failure to detect the al Qaeda leader, who had allegedly been living there for five years and partly because the military raid was a violation of national sovereignty without the powerful institution's knowledge or approval.

The Times said Pakistan's military has been distancing itself from US intelligence and counterinsurgency operations in over the past several weeks. It dated the latest round of mistrust to January, when a CIA contractor killed two Pakistani civilians on a street in the eastern city of Lahore, resulting in his arrest and later release via a controversial payment of "blood money" to relatives of the victims.

dpa, AFP