The government of Afghanistan will present Pakistan with more intelligence on militants’ whereabouts and it is “hopeful that measures will be taken,” said Karim Rahimi, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, on Tuesday. A rift between Afghanistan and Pakistan deepened as Karzai’s office said intelligence about Taliban and Al Qaeda fugitives allegedly hiding in Pakistan was “very strong and accurate.”Pakistan and Afghanistan are key allies of Washington in its war on terrorism. But relations have deteriorated sharply since Karzai, on a visit to Islamabad last month, gave a list to Musharraf of Taliban and Al Qaeda fugitives he said were hiding in Pakistan. Afghan and Pakistani officials said that the list included Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar and top associates, and that Afghanistan also shared the locations of alleged terrorist training camps. “Afghanistan provided very strong and accurate intelligence,” Rahimi told a press conference Tuesday in response to a claim by Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf in an interview Sunday on CNN that the information was old.
Rahimi said that even if the intelligence was outdated, “It still shows that there are problems and terrorists have freedom of movement” in Pakistan. Pakistan has accused Afghanistan of leaking the list to the media because Kabul did not trust Islamabad to act on it. “The bad-mouthing against Pakistan is a deliberate, articulated conspiracy,” Musharraf was quoted as saying on Monday by the state-run news agency, Associated Press of Pakistan.