A handout photo released by Turkey’s Presidential Palace Press Office shows Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul (C) talking with his Afghan and Pakistani counterparts Hamid Karzai (R) and Asif Ali Zardari during their meeting at Cankaya Presidential Palace in Ankara on December 12, 2012. —AFP Photo

ANKARA: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is meeting Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari in a bid to increase cooperation between the two nations despite an attack last week that wounded the Afghan spy chief.

Afghan intelligence chief Asadullah Khalid was seriously injured when a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace envoy detonated an explosive. The Afghan leader has said the attack was organized in Pakistan but has refrained from directly accusing Islamabad.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry dismissed the charges leveled by the Afghan government, asking them to share “information or evidence with the government of Pakistan that they might have with regard to the cowardly attack on the head of NDS”.

Pakistan also asked the Afghan government to probe any “lapses in the security arrangements around the NDS chief,” adding that it was “ready to assist any investigation of this criminal act.”

Afghan officials said Karzai would present evidence to President Zardari about the attack on Khalid during Wednesday’s meeting in the Turkish capital Ankara, hosted by Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

It is the Turkish, Afghan and Pakistani leaders’ seventh such meeting aimed at advancing the peace process between Kabul and Islamabad.