Major-General Shaukat Sultan is shocked—shocked!—to hear that there may be terrorists in Pakistan: Pakistan takes issue with Negroponte over al Qaeda.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan said on Friday the United States had not given it any information about the presence of al Qaeda leaders after U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte said they were holed up in Pakistan.

“We have no such information nor has any such thing been communicated to us by any U.S. authority,” Pakistan’s military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan told Reuters.

Washington’s ally has always contended that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al Zawahri, could be either side of the rugged, porous border with Afghanistan. But in an unusually direct statement, Negroponte on Thursday named Pakistan as the center of an al Qaeda web that radiated out to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. In a testimony to a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Negroponte wrote, without naming bin Laden or Zawahri, that al Qaeda leaders were holed up in a secure hide-out in Pakistan.

He said they were rebuilding a network that has been decimated by the capture or killing of hundreds of al Qaeda members since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Negroponte acknowledged Pakistan’s efforts in the fight against terrorism but said it was a “major source of Islamic extremism.”

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry responded to Negroponte’s comments, saying he should have mentioned that successes against al Qaeda were made possible by Pakistan and the focus should “remain on cooperation instead of questionable criticism.”

It also contradicted Negroponte’s assertion that al Qaeda operatives elsewhere were being controlled from Pakistan. “In breaking the back of al Qaeda, Pakistan has done more than any other country in the world,” spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.