Abbasi denies saying Kabul attackers crossed border from Pakistan

KABUL Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has said “the bombers who killed more than 90 people in the attack in Kabul in May were likely to have come from Pakistan.”

 “I don’t know all the details, but it seems three or four people crossed over the border. There was a vehicle which travelled from that area to Kabul and was parked in an embassy compound before it blew up,” Abbasi told Financial Times in New York on Saturday.

The Pakistani premier is in New York to attend the UN general assembly meeting. In the interview with FT, Abbasi said: “We have 250,000 troops fighting there (border region), but we don’t have control of the full area. [Militants] often cross the border from the other side and attack our people. If the Afghan army cannot control them, and US forces cannot control them, what are we supposed to do?”

The deadly May 31st bombing in Zanbaq Square in Wazir Akbar Khan diplomatic area of Kabul in the vicinity of German Embassy, killed more than 150 people and wounded 350 others.

However, in Islamabad, the Prime Minister House rejected remarks attributed to PM Abbassi regarding the involvement of Pakistanis in the attack in Kabul.

“The remarks are simply baseless and have no reference to discussions with any media person,” the PM office said in a statement on Monday.

The Pakistan prime minister said he found Washington’s Pakistan policy “confusing”, and that he had to rely on media reports to find out what President Donald Trump’s plans were for the region. 

He warned the US of risking fuelling terrorism in the region and undermining military efforts in Afghanistan if the Trump administration followed through with a threat to downgrade its relationship with Islamabad.

He also threatened to drop the US as supplier of military aircraft to apply pressure on its ally. “The signals we get from Washington are confusing, but our message is very clear: we are committed to fighting terror and we will continue to fight terror,” Abbasi said.

Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS.

There has been so far no word from Afghan security officials about the parking of the tanker in one of the embassies in Kabul.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had said the new US strategy was prepared after fundamental discussion, deep and comprehensive analysis and that the strategy was in the interest of both Afghanistan and the US.

sns/ma