CIA,Pak working together,but wary

Inside a secret detention centre in an industrial pocket of Islamabad,Pakistani and US spies have kept a watchful eye on a senior Taliban leader captured last month.

Inside a secret detention centre in an industrial pocket of Islamabad,Pakistani and US spies have kept a watchful eye on a senior Taliban leader captured last month. With the other eye,they watch each other.

The CIA and the ISI are now moving warily toward conflicting goals,with each maneuvering to protect its influence after the shooting stops in Afghanistan. Yet interviews in recent days show them working together.

Beyond the capture of Mullah Baradar,CIA operatives working with the ISI have carried out numerous raids in Pakistan over the past year,say Pakistani security officials.

Successful missions sometimes end with US and Pakistani spies toasting one another with Johnnie Walker Blue Label,a gift from the CIA.

Officials in Washington and Islamabad agree that the relationship between the two spy agencies has steadily improved since the low point of the summer of 2008,when the CIAs deputy director travelled to Pakistan to confront ISI officials with communications intercepts indicating that the ISI was complicit in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

A turning point came last August,when a CIA missile killed Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud as he lay on the roof of his compound in South Waziristan,his wife beside him massaging his back.

Even as the ISI breaks up a number of Taliban cells,officials in Islamabad,Washington and Kabul hint that the ISIs goal seems to be to weaken the Taliban just enough to bring them to the negotiating table,but leaving them strong enough to represent Pakistani interests in a future Afghan government.

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This contrasts sharply with the American goal of battering the Taliban and strengthening the Afghan government and security forces.

Tensions in the relationship surfaced in the days soon after Baradars arrest,when the ISI refused to allow CIA officers to interrogate him. NYT

Afghanistan: Pak to hand over Baradar

KABUL: Pakistan has agreed to hand over to Afghanistan captured Afghan Taliban number two,Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar,and other militants,President Hamid Karzais office said on Thursday. The Government of Pakistan has accepted Afghanistans proposal for extraditing Mullah Baradar and other Taliban who are in its custody and showed readiness to hand over those prisoners8230; on the basis of an agreement between the two countries, the statement said.

Missile strike kills Taliban leader

PARACHINAR: Pakistani intelligence officials say a Taliban commander wanted in connection with the 2006 bombing of the US consulate in Karachi has been killed in a suspected CIA missile strike. Two intelligence officials said Mohammed Qari Zafar was among 13 people killed in the missile attack Wednesday in the Dargah Mandi area of North Waziristan region near the border with Afghanistan. A local government official,confirmed the suspected missile strike in the area on Wednesday and said it killed 13 people. Agencies