Pak downplays involvement of Tehreek-e-Taliban in Times Square bomb attempt

Washington, May 3 (ANI): The claim made by the Tehreek-e-Taliban of being involved in an attempted car bomb attack in New York's Times Square has been downplayed by Pakistani intelligence officials, as lacking in credibility.

An Internet video purportedly from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the failed car bomb attempt, the US monitoring service SITE said Sunday.

Posted on YouTube, the video said the attempted bombing was an act of revenge for the recent killing of two top Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq, US drone strikes in Pakistan and US treatment of a Pakistani neuroscientist, SITE said.

"There is no credible way to prove that the Taliban have this kind of capacity to attempt such an attack in the heart of the United States," said a Pakistani intelligence official.

"A claim is far easier to make than to be carried out in real life," CBS News quoted a Pakistani intelligence official, as saying.

The intelligence official was responding to a statement on a website commonly used by Islamists in which the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attempt.

A Western diplomat in Islamabad said: "The Taliban have no demonstrated ability to strike in distant places. Structurally, they are far from being a global organization like al Qaeda."

Taliban News apparently posted the video on YouTube early Sunday, but a service message said it had been removed because of a "use violation".

SITE said the video contained an audio message from Qari Hussein Mehsud, a Tehreek-e-Taliban official that was played over anti-American images with English subtitles.(ANI)