US warned Pakistan army chief to halt truck bomb, but was ignored

An American commander asked Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff to halt a truck bomb two days before an explosion wounded 77 US troops at a base in Wardak, 50 miles southwest of Kabul.

According to a report in The Guardian, General John Allen personally asked General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan's army chief, to halt an insurgent truck bomb that was heading for his troops, during a meeting in Islamabad two days before a huge explosion wounded 77 US soldiers.

In reply, General Kayani offered to "make a phone call" to stop the assault on the US base in Wardak province.

But his failure to use the American intelligence to prevent the attack has fuelled a blazing row between the US and Pakistan.

Furious American officials blame the Taliban-inspired group the Haqqanis - and, by extension, Pakistani intelligence - for the September 10 bombing and an even more audacious guerrilla assault on the Kabul US embassy three days later that killed 20 people and lasted more than 20 hours.

On Thursday the US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqanis as "a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency".

He earlier accused the ISI of fighting a "proxy war" in Afghanistan through the group.

Pakistan's Defence Minister Ahmed Mocha has rejected the American accusations of Haqqani patronage as "baseless".

"No one can threaten Pakistan as we are an independent state," he said.