WASHINGTON, Dec 2: The latest trove of US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show Afghan President Hamid Karzai telling US and UN officials that he is sheltering Baloch nationalist leaders. The cables show that a stream of Pakistani demands for the return of these leaders, particularly Brahamdagh Bugti, are stonewalled by Mr Karzai.

One cable shows Mr Karzai telling UN officials that he regrets not accepting the slain Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti’s request for asylum in Afghanistan.

He says he turned down the request because he feared it would further deteriorate his already tense relations with Pakistan.In the cables, Brahamdagh Bugti is accused of kidnapping a senior UN official; and the Islamabad CIA station chief is roped into an initiative to move Mr Bugti to Ireland which was thwarted by Pakistan.

One cable says that Mr Bugti’s case was a “neuralgic” one for Pakistani generals. The rebel Baloch leader fled Pakistan in 2006 after surviving a military assault that killed his grandfather, Nawab Akbar Bugti.

The cables show that President Karzai continuously turned down Pakistan’s request to surrender Mr Bugti, accusing Islamabad of using the issue to deflect attention from its support of the Taliban.

“Fomenting uprising does not make one a terrorist,” he said in one meeting before asking US officials to stop taking notes because the matter was “too sensitive”.

In public, Afghan officials have consistently denied sheltering Mr Bugti, but in a meeting with a senior UN official in February 2009, President Karzai “finally admitted that Brahamdagh Bugti was in Kabul”, the cables recorded.The admission followed the kidnapping of a senior American UN official, John Solecki, in Balochistan.

After Solecki was snatched from Quetta in early February, Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani told the US he had phone intercepts that proved Bugti had orchestrated the kidnapping. On 15 February, the US asked the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to call President Karzai , urging him to speak with Mr Bugti and have Mr Solecki released.

President Karzai agreed, but said he doubted Mr Bugti was involved. US officials later complained that Mr Karzai was blocking American contact with the rebel. Mr Solecki was released on April 4 in Balochistan. By removing Bugti from Afghanistan US officials believe they could remove an “irritant” in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations. They also fear he could be traded against other militants of greater interest.

Last February, after the arrest of the senior Taliban leader Mullah Barader in Karachi, US diplomats said to “watch out for consideration of some type of exchange of Barader with Bugti”.

But one cable says that while Mr Bugti may be a core issue at some political level, the “truths Barader could tell about ISI not to mention a host of other Pakistani notables, likely outweigh any potential wins in bringing Bugti to Pakistani justice”.