AFGHANISTAN’S intelligence agency said last night it had thwarted a plot to assassinate President Hamid Karzai after arresting a bodyguard and five people with links to the Haqqani network and al-Qaida.

Pakistan’s army chief will convene a special meeting of senior commanders today following US allegations that the military’s spy agency helped militants attack American targets in Afghanistan, the army said.

Three al-Qaida members including a top operative believed to have been tasked by Osama bin Laden with targeting American economic interests around the world have been held in Pakistan.

A MOBILE phone used by Osama bin Laden’s courier appears to show that the al-Qaida leader was aided by militants linked to Pakistani intelligence, The New York Times said.

A mobile phone of Osama bin Laden's trusted courier recovered in the US raid that killed both men contained contacts for a militant group that is a long-time asset of Pakistan's intelligence agency, it was reported today.

PAKISTAN’S prime minister said Osama bin Laden’s death in an American raid was “indeed justice done” and insisted the relationship with the US was still strong.

OSAMA bin Laden was still actively in control of al-Qaida at the time he was killed in his compound in Pakistan, US intelligence officials have said.

An American convicted of helping plan the 2008 Mumbai terrorist massacre has backed claims that Pakistan was heavily involved in the attack.

PAKISTANI authorities blocked a vital supply route for NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan yesterday after the killing of three soldiers in two NATO cross-border incursions, officials said.

THE release of some 91,000 secret US military documents on the Afghanistan war is just the beginning, WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange promised yesterday, adding that he still has thousands more Afghan files to post online.

Pakistan's intelligence agency today denied claims that they secretly aid the Taliban, detailed in leaked US military reports.

A team of militants launched a gun, rocket and suicide attack on an intelligence office in central Pakistan today, killing 12 people.

At least four people were killed today when a bomb exploded near an intelligence office in the central Pakistani city of Multan, police said.

A suicide car bomber targeted buildings housing police and intelligence agency offices in eastern Pakistan today, killing about 30 and wounding more than 100 in one of the deadliest such blasts in the country this year, officials said.

Pakistan has fired its national security adviser amid tensions with India over the Mumbai attacks, a sign of strain on the weak civilian administration as it responds to growing pressure to track down and punish the alleged masterminds.

India’s prime minister said today the sophistication of the Mumbai siege meant Pakistani authorities must have had a hand in the attacks.

Indian authorities today named a third suspect in this week’s Mumbai train bombings, as the local media said the well-co-ordinated attacks that killed 200 people were planned by Pakistan’s main intelligence agency. Pakistan has denied the charge.

Several more arrests of al-Qaida suspects have been made in Pakistan in the past several days, including one man arrested trying to leave the country from an airport in the eastern city of Lahore, and another arrested in a nearby town, police said.

The leaders of India and Pakistan discussed ways to resolve the poisonous dispute over Kashmir during their historic meeting on the sidelines of a South Asian summit, Pakistani officials said today, predicting a breakthrough in relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan expelled each other’s top diplomats today, virtually slamming the door on hopes for a dialogue to settle the long-standing Kashmir dispute.

The Indian army killed three suspected Islamic militants today after they crossed into Indian-controlled Kashmir from Pakistan, an army spokesman said. It was the first such incident since Islamabad promised to end such incursions last month.

India today claimed that one of its diplomatic staff has been abducted in Islamabad by Pakistani intelligence personnel, apparently in retaliation for the arrest of a Pakistani diplomat earlier in the week.