Official: Pakistan Ordered Assassination of Afghan Leader

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan official yesterday accused Pakistan's premier spy agency of organizing a recent assassination attempt on President Karzai of Afghanistan, the most serious in a string of allegations against Pakistan.

The charge bodes ill for American efforts to get Pakistan's new government to work with Mr. Karzai's embattled administration to counter Islamic militants on their common border.

Mr. Karzai escaped unharmed when assailants fired guns and mortars toward the president, senior officials, and foreign diplomats during a military parade in downtown Kabul on April 27. Three Afghans were killed.

Since then, Mr. Karzai has ramped up his criticism of Pakistan, whom Afghan officials have long suspected of secretly aiding the insurgents. Mr. Karzai even threatened to send troops into Pakistan to eliminate Taliban leaders this month.

The Afghan intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, alleged last month that suspects involved in the attempt on Mr. Karzai had exchanged cell phone text messages with people in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions and the city of Peshawar.

A presidential spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said Tuesday that "the hand of one foreign intelligence agency was clearly involved."

Mr. Saleh's spokesman, Saeed Ansari, went further yesterday, claiming Afghan intelligence could prove Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency was involved.

"The evidence and documents as well as the confessions of people arrested by the intelligence service shows that the main organizer of the terrorist acts during the 16th anniversary of the mujahedeen victory was the intelligence service of Pakistan and its allies," Mr. Ansari said.

Pressed at a news conference for details, Mr. Ansari said one piece of evidence was a secret code used during phone conversations between militants. He released a list of phone numbers prefixed with Pakistan's country code, 92, which he said they had used.

Also yesterday, coalition airstrikes killed 22 militants who were attacking two towns in eastern Afghanistan, and explosions killed two more foreign soldiers in the south, officials said.