Mr. Grossman conveyed the message in a way to alert the Pakistani leaders that time was of the essence and that Pakistan needed to show some positive steps to stanch the tide of anger, according to Obama administration officials familiar with the meeting in Islamabad Monday night.

General Kayani and General Pasha, embarrassed at home and abroad by the raid that occurred without their permission, gave no specific response to the American diplomat, the officials said.

“The Pakistanis have been told by the Americans that the temperature is rising in Washington and the reaction has been silence,” one administration official said.

Still, Obama administration officials seem determined to avoid the kind of break in relations that would jeopardize the counterterrorism network they have carefully constructed in Pakistan over the last few years, and in public Mr. Grossman was more gentle.

At a news conference with the secretary of the Foreign Office, Salman Bashir, and Javeed Ludin, the Afghan deputy foreign minister, he said that “both Pakistan and Afghanistan are determined to curb terrorism.”

Video

The tough statement by the Foreign Office came as anger mounted on Capitol Hill about Bin Laden being found in a garrison city in Pakistan after more than $10 billion dollars in assistance to Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies over the last decade.

The Foreign Office statement was clearly intended to answer the criticism, noting that Pakistan had shared information with the C.I.A. on the Bin Laden compound starting in 2009, and that the “intelligence flow continued until mid-April 2011.”

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

The basic question that Pakistan faced revolved around whether the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies knew of Bin Laden’s location and protected him, or whether they were incompetent and did not know that he was living in Abbottabad, a city less than a two-hour drive from the national capital.

At the heart of the problem, American officials say, is the lack of trust between the countries, particularly between the two intelligence agencies that were supposed to be fighting terrorism in tandem.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, cooperation on Al Qaeda vastly improved, said Robert Grenier, who served as Islamabad station chief from 1999 to 2002. The two countries shared intelligence that led to the capture of dozens of suspected Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.

Yet there were clear red lines that the ISI refused to cross, like carrying out operations in the tribal areas on the Afghan border where many Qaeda members hid, or arresting Afghan Taliban fighters, who were viewed as friendly proxies.

The two agencies were never fully comfortable with each other, according to a former senior C.I.A. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We never did the full monty with them,” said the former official. “There is always this little dance with them. We don’t trust them fully.”

Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

Two former C.I.A. officials said they doubted the ISI as a whole sheltered Bin Laden, but it was possible current or former members may have helped him. Members of the ISI’s shadowy S wing — which directs operations outside of Pakistan and helped create the Taliban — were seen as particularly close to militants.

“There are rogue elements,” said the former senior official. “There was no shortage of people in the ISI who didn’t like us and would support the Islamic extremists.”

The distrust between the C.I.A. and ISI became so deep in the last several years that the C.I.A. created its own network of human intelligence that ran parallel and separate to the ISI, according to the former C.I.A. official. Pakistanis in the C.I.A.’s network were instrumental in tracking down the courier to Bin Laden, who was followed by the agents to the compound where the Qaeda leader was living, they said.

The ability to keep that network and develop it even further as a tool in fighting terrorism was one of many reasons the United States could not afford to abandon Pakistan by drastically cutting assistance, as was done in the 1990s, administration officials said.

Video

But in order to claw back its diminishing support in Washington, Pakistan needed to make some positive, and quick, steps, one administration official said.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

An immediate step would be for Pakistan to share with the Americans the contents of the house where bin Laden was killed, and to allow access to his relatives who survived the raid, the official said.

The information would be vital for understanding how long he had been inside the house, and where he had been previously. The Pakistanis had agreed in principle to the American request, but so far have not shared anything, the official said.

The Foreign Office statement made no reference to such an arrangement. Instead, the statement said that the relatives of Bin Laden would be sent back to their countries of origin.

A senior Pakistani general on Tuesday repeated his government’s formal denials that the military or ISI knew of Bin Laden’s location near a prominent military academy in Abbottabad. Instead, he acknowledged a major intelligence lapse by Pakistan police and security forces.

“To me, it’s a big embarrassment that the bastard was in this compound near the academy,” said the Pakistani officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Clearly, the U.S. had better intelligence than we did about what was inside that compound.”

The general said Pakistan and the United States had cooperated in other counterterrorism operations in the Abbottabad area in recent weeks, notably a C.I.A. tip that led to Pakistan’s recent arrest of Umar Patek, one of the main Indonesian suspects in the 2002 Bali bombing.

But the general said the Obama administration’s decision to withhold information of the impending raid against Bin Laden’s hideaway reflected deep distrust. “They’re saying we’re not a partner to be trusted,” the officer said.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

A civilian official in the Pakistani government said he did not know if the ISI helped Bin Laden hide or was simply unaware of his presence in Abbottabad. Either way, the successful American raid was an international humiliation for the agency.

“I’m not denying the possibility,” the official said, referring to the ISI sheltering Bin Laden. “At worst, it’s that. At best, it’s total incompetence.”

He said he hoped the raid would lead Pakistanis — particularly military and ISI leaders — to recognize the deep credibility problem their country now faces internationally.

“Pakistan has to overcome a culture,” he said, “of thinking that they can brazenly lie their way through.”