Pakistan arrests CIA informants

ISI nabs five men who helped the CIA keep a tab on Osama Bin Laden's comings and goings in Pak home

Pakistan arrests CIA informants

ISI nabs five men who helped the CIA keep a tab on Osama Bin Laden's comings and goings in Pak home

Pakistan's top spy agency has arrested five Pakistani informants who assisted the CIA ahead of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The men arrested reportedly include a Pakistani Army major said to have copied the licence plate of cars that drove up to bin Laden's compound in the military town of Abbottabad, two hours from the capital Islamabad.

Weeks after the Osama raid at Abbottabad, CIA director claims ties with the Pakistani military is at an all-time low

The Pakistani military denied that any army officer had been detained over what it called the "Abbottabad incident".

"The story is false and totally baseless," it said in a statement. A Pakistani security official earlier said that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency had no immediate comment on the report.

US officials said that Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta raised the fate of the CIA informants during talks with Pakistani military and intelligence officers in Pakistan last week.

At a closed briefing last week, the CIA deputy director rated Pakistan's counterterrorism cooperation with the United States as three out of 10, said officials.

Relations between Pakistan and the United States, wary at the best of times, deteriorated sharply over the bin Laden raid on May 2, which humiliated the Pakistani military and invited allegations of incompetence and complicity.

As US President Barack Obama seeks to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, US and Pakistani officials have sought to play down any unease between them.