Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the No. 2 behind Afghan Taleban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Osama Bin Laden, was captured in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, two Pakistani intelligence officers and a senior US official said.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release such sensitive information.
One Pakistani officer said Baradar was arrested 10 days ago with the assistance of the United States and "was talking" to his interrogators. The New York Times first reported the arrest on its website late Monday.
Baradar is the most senior Afghan Taleban leader arrested since the beginning of the Afghan war in 2001.
Pakistan's spy agency has been accused in the past of protecting top Taleban leaders believed sheltering in the country, frustrating Washington. Moving against Baradar could signal that Islamabad increasingly views the Afghan Taleban, or at least some of its members, as fair game.
There was also speculation that the arrest could be related in some way to a new push by the United States and its NATO allies to negotiate with moderate Afghan Taleban leaders as a way to end the eight-year war in Afghanistan. Pakistan has an important role in that process because of its close links with members of the movement, which it supported before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"If Pakistani officials had wanted to arrest him, they could have done it at any time," said Sher Mohammad Akhud Zada, the former governor of Afghanistan's Helmand province and a member of the Afghan parliament. "Why did they arrest him now?"
Baradar heads the Taleban's military council and was elevated in the body after the 2006 death of military chief Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani. He is known to coordinate the movement's military operations throughout the south and southwest of Afghanistan. His area of direct responsibility stretches over Kandahar, Helmand, Nimroz, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces.
According to Interpol, Baradar was the deputy defense minister in the Taleban regime that ruled Afghanistan until it was ousted in the 2001 US-led invasion.
Karachi is Pakistan's largest city and has been increasingly cited as a possible hiding place for top Afghan Taleban commanders in recent months. It has a large population of Pashtuns, the ethnic group that makes up the Taleban, but it is on the Arabian Sea and far from the Afghan border.
A Taleban spokesman in Afghanistan told The Associated Press that Baradar was still free, though he did not provide any evidence.
"We totally deny this rumor. He has not been arrested," Zabiullah Mujahid told the AP by telephone. He said the report was Western propaganda aimed at undercutting the Taleban fighting against an offensive in the southern Afghan town of Marjah, a Taleban haven.
"The Taleban are having success with our jihad. It is to try to demoralize the Taleban who are on jihad in Marjah and all of Afghanistan," he said.
The Times said it learned of the operation against Baradar on Thursday but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials who argued that publicizing it would end a valuable intelligence-gathering effort by making Baradar's associates aware of his capture. The newspaper said it decided to publish the news after White House officials acknowledged Baradar's capture was becoming widely known in the region.
