Pakistan’s army high brass convenes over US pressures

Pakistan's strong military chief General Ashfaq Kayani on Sunday called a "special" meeting of his high commands to talk about the security condition, the army said, as the battle of words with the United States shoot up.

The special meeting of the corps commanders came against the surroundings of bitter U.S. blames that Pakistan army's strong spy agency assisted the Haqqani insurgent group Washington blames for the latest assault on its embassy and other objectives in Kabul.

In a short two-line statement, the army said the commanders would "evaluate (the) existing security condition."

Kayani, who is leaving for London later tonight to deliver a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Royal College of Defense Studies, is presiding the meeting.

"The meeting reproduces the seriousness of calamity," retired general, turned security expert, Talat Masood said.

"They will issue a statement to articulate harmony (within the army) and to show that they all are on one page."

The corps commanders meeting appears to a day after Kayani met with U.S. CENTCOM commander General James N. Mattis in Pakistan, but Pakistan’s army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said the two meetings were "not related."

CONTACTS WITH HAQQANIS

In an interview with CNN, Abbas accepted that military's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) sustained contacts with the Haqqani network, but said that didn't indicate it hold up it.

"Any spy agency would like to carry on links with whatever opposition group, whatever rebel organization ... for some positive results, " he told CNN in a telephone interview.

However, he said there was a biggest distinction between upholding those contacts to ease peace and sustaining it against a partner.

In the most straight comments by a U.S. officer since Pakistan tied the U.S.-led war on insurgency in 2001, the leaving chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, on Thursday showed before the U.S. Senate that the Haqqani insurgent network is a "absolute arm" of the ISI.

He also for the first time held Islamabad in charge for the Kabul assault, saying Pakistan given assistance for that attack.

The Haqqani network is the most aggressive and efficient faction among Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

On Saturday night, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani denied U.S. blames as an indication of American "puzzlement and policy disorder."

"We clearly deny statements of any involvement with the Haqqanis or of stand in war," Gilani said, breaking off from an address to aid agencies and foreign ambassadors on the country's flood catastrophe.

Though Pakistan formally discarded assistance for the Taliban after the September 11 assaults on the United States in 2001 and associated itself with Washington's "war on terror," spectators say components of the ISI denied making the doctrinal transfer.

Gilani's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told Washington on Friday that it endangered losing an ally if it kept blaming Islamabad of playing a dual game in the war against terror, and raising a crisis in ties generated by U.S. forces' killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in an unexpected attack in May.

Security expert Masood said the sharpened speechifying between Pakistan and the United States could result to a "collision."

One of the choices for Pakistan, he said, could be to build up pressure on Haqqani fighters to run off Pakistan to turn away a quarrel.

"I consider both Pakistan and the United States will move back to prevent making things ruined.