Afghan security forces arrested a Pakistani intelligence officer in the east of the country, a presidential spokesman said on Tuesday.
KABUL: Afghan security forces arrested a Pakistani intelligence officer in the east of the country, a presidential spokesman said on Tuesday, a day after an army general was arrested for alleged espionage.
The man's arrest on Monday in troubled Kunar province bordering Pakistan comes amid a row between the two allies in the US-led "war on terror" over Islamabad's alleged efforts to destabilise Afghanistan.
"A Pakistani national currently working as an officer for ISI was arrested with convincing documents," Mohammad Karim Rahimi, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, told a weekly briefing.
Rahimi gave no further details about the arrest and said the case was under investigation.
A senior government official at the presidential palace named the Pakistani as Sayed Akbar and said he had confessed to having contacts with "high-ranking" ISI officers in neighbouring Nuristan province.
Akbar had been in Kunar since 2004 pretending to work as an assistant to a local Afghan doctor, the official said.
Pakistan said Kabul had not informed it about the arrest of any Pakistani national.
"As far as their claim about arrest of a Pakistani national... the Afghan government has not contacted us," Pakistani Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
"Our embassy in Kabul has sought consular access (to any arrested Pakistani) which the Afghans are required to provide." Meanwhile Rahimi said that in a separate incident months ago an employee for Afghanistan's intelligence agency was arrested on charges of spying for Pakistan.
"The intelligence worker was also arrested for the crime of national treason which is spying for foreigners," said Rahimi. Officials in Kabul said on Monday that they had arrested an Afghan army general, Khair Mohammad, on similar espionage charges in the past week.
"He was arrested for committing national treason, spying for foreigners, in action and is under investigation. The general was spying for ISI of Pakistan," he added.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai last week for the first time publicly accused the Pakistani government of supporting Taliban insurgents, saying elements in Islamabad wanted to turn Afghans into "slaves".
He accused the ISI in particular of helping the Islamist militia amid a spike in insurgent violence that has made 2006 Afghanistan's bloodiest year since the fall of the Taliban five years ago.
Pakistan firmly denies helping the Taliban and points to the fact that it has 80,000 troops along the border with Afghanistan, hundreds of whom have died fighting pro-Taliban militants.
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