Kevin Rudd’s disclosure of Bali bomber Umar Patek’s capture could have compromised the U.S. operation to kill Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan says.

According to Pakistan’s ISI Intelligence agency, the former Australian Prime Minister “shattered” a trust by publicly confirming the arrest of the Al-Qaeda acolyte last March in the same town where bin Laden was found and killed recently.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade declares that the statements reported in The Australian are "untrue and absurd".

Pakistan had intentionally kept Patek's January capture a secret, worrying that "subsequent leads would all go dead" said a spokesperson for the ISI Intelligence Agency.

Rudd verified the arrest of Patek on March 30 at the end of a Bali Process meeting he co-chaired with Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa.

"If the news gets out that this person has been arrested then all his contacts disappear. That's precisely why we did not do it but somebody else beat us to it. Your guys (Australia), in their wisdom, thought it would be good to score a point," an ISI spokesman was quoted.

"They had no hand in his arrest. We're the ones who arrested him and we shared that information with them in confidence and that confidence we found was shattered when they immediately went public with the information," added the spokesman.

Richardson said Rudd's statements about the issue were "in conformity with the advice from the Australian security and intelligence community” and this had been confirmed by the US embassy in Canberra.

According to The Australian, there is proof that Pakistani authorities were sincere in their efforts to keep Patek's arrest secret. The newspaper also stated Pakistani’s annoyance to Rudd's announcement.

Why the revelation of Patek's arrest in Abbottabad did not cause alarm in the bin Laden area remains a surprise to security experts.

Rudd’s Indonesian counterpart, Natalegawa, refused to confirm the arrest. "Not wanting at the same time to reject what Kevin, Mr Rudd, has said, I cannot confirm that fact," he said.