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American commander asked Pakistan’s army chief to halt truck bomb two days before an explosion wounded 77 in Kabul The American Nato commander in Afghanistan personally asked Pakistan’s army chief to halt an insurgent truck bomb headed for his troops during a meeting in Islamabad earlier this month, two days before a huge explosion that wounded 77 US soldiers at a base near Kabul. In reply General Ashfaq Kayani offered to “make a phone call” to stop the assault on the US base in Wardak province. But his failure to use the American intelligence to prevent the attack has fuelled a blazing row between the US and Pakistan. Furious American officials blame the Taliban-inspired group the Haqqanis – and, by extension, Pakistani intelligence — for the September 10 bombing and an even more audacious guerrilla assault on the US embassy in Kabul three days later that killed 20 people and lasted over 20 hours. The US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqanis as “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency”; he earlier accused the ISI of fighting a “proxy war” in Afghanistan through the group. Pakistan’s defence minister Ahmed Mukhtar rejected the American accusations of Haqqani patronage as “baseless”. “No one can threaten Pakistan as we are an independent state,” he said. The angry accusations lift the veil on sensitive conversations that have heretofore largely taken place behind closed doors. On September 8 General John Allen, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, raised intelligence reports of the impending truck bomb during a meeting with the Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani in Islamabad . Kayani promised Allen he would “make a phone call” to try to stop the attack, according to a western official with close knowledge of the meeting. “The offer raised eyebrows,” the official said. But two days later, just after Allen’s return to Kabul, an explosives-rigged truck ploughed into the gates of the US base in Wardak , 50 miles southwest of Kabul, injuring 77 US soldiers and killing two Afghan civilians. Afterwards the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, blamed the Haqqanis . “They enjoy safe havens in North Waziristan,” he said, referring to the Haqqani main base in the tribal belt. General Allen’s spokesman said Nato “routinely shares intelligence with the Pakistanis regarding insurgent activities” but he refused to confirm the details of the conversation with Kayani. The Pakistani military spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said: “Let’s suppose it was the case. The main question is how did this truck travel to Wardak and explode without being checked by Nato?” he said. “This is just a blame game”. US allegations of ISI links to Haqqani attacks stretch back to July 2008, when the CIA deputy director Stephen Kappes flew to Islamabad with intercept evidence that linked the ISI to an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. But American disquiet has never been so uncompromisingly expressed as in recent days. The issue dominated three hours of talks between secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar . On Tuesday Mullen said he had asked Kayani to “disconnect” the ISI from the Haqqanis . In Washington the CIA chief, David Petraeus, delivered a similar message in private to the ISI chief General Shuja Pasha. Even the soft-spoken US ambassador to Islamabad, Cameron Munter, has joined the chorus of condemnation, delivered a hard-hitting message through an interview on Pakistani state radio. “We’ve changed our message in private too,” one US official said. “Before we used to make polite demands about the Haqqanis. Now we are saying ‘this has to stop’.” The new mood is driven by a combination of climbing casualties and brazen attacks. The Haqqanis were also blamed for a recent assault on the InterContinental Hotel, while August was the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan with 71 deaths. Now Nato is now investigating whether the Haqqanis had a hand in Tuesday’s assassination of Berhanuddin Rabbani, President Hamid Karzai’s peace envoy to the Taliban. Rabbani was killed at his home by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives-packed turban. The killer gained access to the former president by playing down the insurgency’s links to Pakistan. A blood-stained four-page letter he was carrying at the time of the attack, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, insisted that “Pakistan is not our boss.” American officials have vowed to act unilaterally if Pakistan fails to comply with their demands over the Haqqanis. But it remains unclear how far they are willing to go against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation that still provides vital counter-terrorism support. There was some hope of resuscitated fragile relations between the Pakistani and American intelligence services, which were buffeted by the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2. Officials from both countries hailed an August 28 joint operation to arrest Younis al Mauritani, a senior al Qaida operative, in the western city of Quetta. On September 5 the Pakistani military issued a press release that highlighted Pakistan-American cooperation ; some viewed the raid as a possible turning point in relations. [ But the flurry of Haqqani attacks over the past two weeks seemed to have washed away whatever goodwill was generated by the arrest. US officials say debate is raging inside US policy circles about what to do next. The Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, is said to have private advocated US military incursions into the Haqqani stronghold of Waziristan – a risky gambit other officials reject as dangerous folly, citing the historical record of failure of western armies in the tribal belt. Other US officials say Washington could slash non-military aid such as the $7.5bn five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman package, which was approved in 2009. There is also debate about the exact nature of the ISI’s relationship with the Haqqanis. One western official said it was not a puppet-master scenario. “It’s not like they have a chain of command, with the Pakistanis handing down XOs (executive orders),” he said. Neither are the Pakistanis necessarily providing logistical support, he added: “It’s murkier than that.” But, the official added, the US believes Pakistan is ‘actively tolerating’ the Haqqanis. And the ISI could, if it wanted to, seriously disrupt the groups’ activities. He warned that Pakistan was headed towards international isolation. “If it keeps going like this, it could end up like Syria – before the Arab spring”. Pakistan Afghanistan US military United States Nato Declan Walsh Jon Boone guardian.co.uk