'ISI may act if India, Afghanistan get too close'

Washington: Accusing India of trying to create anti-Pakistan Afghanistan, former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf has warned that Islamabad's spy agency will need to take "counter-measures" if Afghanistan becomes too close to India.

"Since our independence, Afghanistan always has been anti-Pakistan because the Soviet Union and India have very good relations in Afghanistan," he said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank on Wednesday.

Accusing India of working to turn Afghanistan against Pakistan, he said, "We must not allow this to continue."

"We must not begrudge if Pakistan orders ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) to take counter-measures to protect its own interests," said Musharraf defending the Pakistani spy agency that US officials accused of supporting extremists.

"Now, India is trying to create anti-Pakistan Afghanistan. This is most unfortunate, and I am not saying this because I have some (Indo-centric) - and I'm anti-India. I know this through intelligence; I know this to be a fact," he said.

"Today - and just to give you one proof: Today, in Afghanistan, Afghanistan diplomats, the intelligence people, the security people, the army men all go to India for training," Musharraf said.

"Now they go there, they come back, they get indoctrinated against Pakistan and, may I say, over the years since our independence, Afghanistan always has been anti-Pakistan because Soviet Union and India have very close relation in Afghanistan."

"And the intelligence agency, KGB, RAW and KHAD of Afghanistan have always been in cooperation and talking since 1950s," Musharraff said.

"So I think this needs a rapprochement certainly between India and Pakistan and rapprochement also between the two intelligence organizations: the RAW of India and the ISI of Pakistan," he said.

Describing current relations between the United States and Pakistan as "terrible," Musharraf said Afghanistan could plunge into conflict along ethnic lines after 2014, when the United States plans to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan.

"Are you leaving a stable Afghanistan or an unstable Afghanistan? Because based on that, I in Pakistan will have to take my own counter-measures," Musharraf said.

The "adverse impact will be on Pakistan, so any leader in Pakistan must think of securing Pakistan's interests," he added.