Pakistan rejects US claims on border fire

Pakistan on Friday rejected US accusations that Pakistani armed forces allow insurgents to fire on American troops across the border in Afghanistan. "I completely reject this, this is wrong and baseless," military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP. US officials have reported a sharp rise in cross-border attacks against its forces in eastern Afghanistan as relations deteriorated after US forces raided Pakistan to kill the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, in May. Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, the deputy US commander in Afghanistan, said that rocket and mortar fire against his forces appears to come from within sight of Pakistani military posts. "In some locations from time to time you will see what just appears to us to be a collaboration... or at a minimum a looking the other way," he said. He said that the border forces come from Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps, who are locally recruited and not as highly trained as army units. Asked about Scaparrotti's comments, Abbas told AFP: "I told you, it is not true, all this is wrong."