Pakistan warns US - "no boots on our ground"

Rehman Malik also rejected US allegations that Pakistan's intelligence agency aids or has ties with the Taliban-allied Haqqani Network.

"The Pakistan nation will not allow the boots on our ground, never. Our government is already cooperating with the US ... but they also must respect our sovereignty," he told Reuters in an interview, insisting that Islamabad wanted US intelligence, not troops, to root out insurgents inside Pakistan.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, this week accused Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) of using the Haqqani Network to wage a "proxy war" on NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

Some US intelligence reporting has alleged that the ISI specifically directed, or urged, the Haqqani Network to carry out last week's attack on the US embassy and a NATO headquarters in Kabul, according to two US officials and a source familiar with recent US-Pakistan official contacts.

"If you say that it is ISI involved in that attack, I categorically deny it. We have no such policy to attack or aid attack through Pakistani forces or through any Pakistani assistance," Malik said.

During the interview to Reuters, Malik conceded that elements of the Haqqani network, which analysts say can draw on a pool of roughly 10,000 to 15,000 fighters, are partly based in unruly ethnic Pashtun tribal region of North Waziristan on the Afghan border.

However, he said the Americans had so far not provided Pakistan with intelligence that would help it go after them.

"Our capacity to trace them in that area is limited. Give us the information and we will operate," he said. "Let's have information, let's have a proper investigation and if there is a requirement, let's have an operation."

"We are fighting a common enemy but unfortunately not with a common strategy. Instead of a blame game we have to sit together. We are not part of the terrorism, we are part of the solution."

Copyright Reuters, 2011