The US authorities are seeking to have four former officers of Pakistan's premier spy agency, including its former chief, declared as international terrorists, a media report claimed on Thursday.
The Foreign Ministry in Islamabad had referred the issue to the Prime Minister's Secretariat, which had yet to respond to it, English-language daily The News reported, citing a ministry insider, reported dpa.
It said the US had put forward to the UN Security Council names of four former officers of Pakistan's military-run Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, whom it wanted to be on the list of international terrorists.
Among the nominated people was ex-ISI chief Hameed Gul, a retired lieutenant general who headed the powerful intelligence agency between 1987 and 1989, the report said.
The ISI has remained the object of international criticism for its alleged support for militant violence in India and Afghanistan.
It was also used by Washington in the 1980s to channel financial and military aid to Islamic resistance movement against Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Gul told the private Geo news channel, a sister media outlet of the newspaper, that he learnt about the issue a few weeks ago through "sympathetic diplomats", and Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Salman Basheer later confirmed the US move.
The report in The News said a spokesman for the ministry did not comment on the matter, while the US embassy in Islamabad also denied having any knowledge.
"If this is true, such a thing would have been dealt by the State Department and taken up directly with the UN there in Washington," Lou Fintor, the embassy's spokesman, told the newspaper.
According to Gul, suggested action against him was part of a US conspiracy to sabotage the ISI which he termed "the first line of country's defence."
The seemingly hard-line general said he would subject himself to a neutral inquiry - vowing to write directly to the UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon - if the government did not protect him and the others.
The report in The News did not mention the names of the three other former ISI officers the US deemed as terrorists.