Pak rejects US allegations of 'security forces-militant collaboration' in Afghan attacks

Islamabad, Oct 28(ANI): Pakistan has rejected US allegations that its armed forces allow insurgents to fire on American troops across the border in Afghanistan. Pakistan military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told a foreign news agency that the accusation was 'wrong and baseless', and that he completely rejected it. Earlier, the deputy US military commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, had told Pentagon reporters that Pakistani security forces and insurgents appear to be collaborating in some cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. In southern Afghanistan's Paktika province, "we have seen indications where fires have originated from positions that were in close proximity to some Pakistan outposts, which-as you might imagine-give us great concern," the CNN had quoted General Scaparrotti, as saying. He had also expressed specific concern about Pakistan's Frontier Corps of local conscripts along the border and their collaboration with insurgents. "You'll see what just appears to us to be a collaboration or was a collaboration or at a minimum looking the other way when insurgents conducted rocket or mortar fire in what we believe to be visual sight of their posts," General Scaparrotti had said. He also said, "We immediately get in contact with our Pakistan counterparts in that case. I think the collaboration is at least in some cases local collaborations with the insurgents, and we talk very bluntly with our Pakistan counterparts about this," and that those 'blunt' discussions have helped in recent weeks. "The Pakistanis have in fact returned fire on several of those points of origin that we've taken fire from now. That's a positive indicator here in the last month," he said. (ANI)