Kabul Demands More U.S. Pressure on Pakistan

The Kabul government on Saturday demanded that Washington increase pressure on Pakistan to act against insurgents using its soil to attack Afghanistan, saying Afghans were running out of patience.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai held talks with U.S. regional envoy, Marc Grossman, in Kabul just days after President Barack Obama warned Pakistan there were "some connections" between its intelligence services and extremists.

"The Afghan president asked Grossman to put more pressure on Pakistan so that future meetings with them should bring a positive result," one official at the presidential palace told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity.

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, long mired in distrust, have recently deteriorated with Kabul alleging that the murder of its peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani was hatched in Pakistan and carried out by a Pakistani.

Kabul accused Islamabad of hindering the investigation and also claimed to have foiled an alleged plot in Pakistan to assassinate Karzai.

The palace quoted Grossman as promising that the United States will "continue putting pressure on Pakistan to take practical steps forward".

Karzai said further meetings with Pakistan "should bring positive results, because after all these suicide attacks and terrorism the people of Afghanistan are losing their patience," added the statement.

U.S. embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall told AFP that Grossman was on a tour of the region to discuss preparations for international conferences on Afghanistan's future in Istanbul and Bonn later this year.

"That's what he met President Karzai about this morning," Sundwall said.

Washington has stepped up calls on Islamabad in recent weeks to break ties with the al-Qaida linked Haqqani network, blamed for last month's 19-hour siege on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

On Thursday, Obama accused Pakistan of "hedging its bets" in "having interactions with some of the unsavory characters who they think might end up regaining power in Afghanistan" after U.S.-led foreign troops leave.

"And there is no doubt that there's some connections the Pakistani military and intelligence services have with certain individuals that we find troubling," he added.

Islamabad denies links between the Haqqanis and its intelligence services.