Pakistan's spies 'incompetent' Opposition leader blasts security forces for sheltering terrorist leader

Pakistan's opposition leader Nawaz Sharif asked how the world's most-wanted man could hide in his country for so long.

Pakistan's opposition leader accused the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency of negligence and incompetence Wednesday as the country's former president said rogue members of the security establishment may have helped Osama bin Laden hide for years near Islamabad.

Ratcheting up pressure on the country's military as it fights off suspicion that it sheltered the al-Qaida leader, rival India named five Pakistani army officers in a list of 50 criminals it wants extradited to stand trial on terror charges.

Nawaz Sharif, who heads Pakistan's largest opposition group, rejected a government decision to put an army general in charge of the inquiry into intelligence lapses that led to the killing of bin Laden in a helicopter raid by U.S. commandos on May 2.

Sparing the government and its leaders in his tirade over the breach of Pakistan's sovereignty by U.S. forces, Sharif blamed the "worst case of negligence and incompetence" by the country's security agencies.

"It is (a) matter of serious concern that our security institutions knew nothing when the helicopter gunships and commandos remained in our territory and airspace for so long," he told a news conference, calling for a judicial commission to lead the investigation to dispel doubts about its objectivity.

Sharif demanded to know how the world's most-wanted man could remain holed up in a compound less than a kilometre from the country's main military academy, and bemoaned the damage the matter has caused to Pakistan's reputation abroad.

"Isn't it true that (the) world considers us as a country that abets and exports terrorism?" he said.

Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, an army general who seized power in 1999 and now lives in exile in London, told ABC News that there is a possibility that rogue junior officers in the country's intelligence and military might have been aware of bin Laden's whereabouts for years.

"It's really appalling that he was there and nobody knew," Musharraf said.

"But rogue element within is a possibility. The possibility . (is that there was), at the lower level, somebody following a policy of his own and violating the policy from above."

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