US may use leaks as leverage to get Pakistan to act tougher

The US may seek to gain leverage from WikiLeaks disclosures about Pakistani spy agency ISI maintaining links with Taliban and al-Qaeda, to get Islamabad to act tougher on militant groups on its soil.  "This is now in the open", a senior Obama administration official said referring to the 92,000 documents of the US defence department's war in Afghanistan made public by the online whistleblower WikiLeaks."Its reality now. In some ways it makes it easier for us to tell Pakistan they have to help us", the New York Times reported quoting the official."The documents seem to lay out rich new details of connection between the Taliban and other militant groups and Pakistan's main spy agency, the directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI," the paper said.It quoted several administration officials privately expressing the views that they might be able to use leaks and their description of a sometimes duplicitous Pakistani ally to pressurise Islamabad to cooperate more fully with the US on counter-terrorism.There is a backdrop of mistrust and wariness between US forces and Pakistan's military intelligence, other US media reports said claiming that the new leaks could lead to a near freeze in cooperation between US agencies and ISI or only exchanges on the need-to-know basis.NYT quoted leading democrats as saying that while the disclosures were not altogether new, "the details underscoreddeep suspicions they have harboured towards the ISI".

"Some of these documents reinforce a longstanding concernof mine about the supporting role of some Pakistani officialsin the Afghan insurgency", senator Carl Levin, MichiganDemocrat who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee toldthe Times.Levin, who recently visited Pakistan, said he had confronted senior Pakistani leaders about ISI's continuing ties to the militant groups.Times said the disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents had increased pressure on president Barack Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghan war.The disclosures have landed at a crucial moment when USforces are facing difficulties on the ground with mountingcasualties and officials as well as people beginning toquestion Washington's policy on Afghanistan.New York Times said it had agreed not to disclose anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardise military or anti-terrorist operations.WikiLeaks said it was withholding some 15,000 more documents that are believed to include names of specific Afghans or Pakistanis who had helped US troops on the ground.