US suspicious of Pak request for sharing more intelligence with it

Lahore, July 31 : The US administration has reportedly responded with scepticism to an appeal from Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani for increased intelligence co-operation, which, according to the premier, would help his country attack militant groups and terrorist encampments near its border with Afghanistan.

According to a report in The Washington Post, an official in the Bush administration said that Islamabad had not been acting on intelligence information given by it.

"The problem from our perspective has not been an absence of information going into the Pakistani government........it's an absence of action," the paper quoted him as saying.

The US official was privy to the ongoing discussions this week between the two governments.

US' concerns about Taliban sympathizers within the ISI have made the Bush administration reluctant to pass on such intelligence and prone to take unilateral action against terrorism suspects, said sources.

Both governments stressed that their meetings have been cordial, and public statements underlined a shared commitment to counter-terrorism. Beneath the surface pleasantries however there was little indication that tensions over their respective contributions to the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban had eased.

ANI