India on Tuesday reacted strongly to the secret documents leaked by WikiLeaks that suggested that Pakistan's tribal areas were being used by its spy agency to stoke insurgency in Afghanistan.
“The utilisation of territory under Pakistan's control to provide sanctuaries for recruiting and sustaining terrorist groups, and to direct terrorist activity against neighbours, must stop if our region is to attain its full potential for peaceful development,” a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said here on Tuesday.
“Sponsorship of terrorism, as an instrument of policy, is wholly condemnable and must cease forthwith,” it added. The MEA said it was basing its observations on media reports about classified information “supposedly from U.S. government sources.”
These reports were posted in public domain on whistleblower website WikiLeaks and alleged support to terrorism by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's military intelligence agency.
Sources who had perused the documents “released” so far said they seemed to show that despite being an ally of the U.S. in the ‘war on terror,' the ISI held secret strategy sessions with the Taliban leadership and arranged manpower to mount attacks on foreign forces and eliminate Afghan leadership.
The reports also indicate that Pakistan's frontier areas, especially the seven tribal agencies, were used as sanctuaries for the Taliban to recoup and recruit fighters for launching attacks in southern Afghanistan. The “documents” also suggest that an intelligence agency had an inkling of the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which killed 58 and injured over 140.
The WikiLeaks provided advance information about the 92,000 documents to three newspapers, which highlighted some of the reports. The website is said to be examining some more documents to remove names for security reasons before airing them publicly. The U.S. has condemned the leaking of the documents.
