ISLAMABAD, 19 August 2003 — Pakistan’s pro-military Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali will discuss the possible dispatch of troops to Iraq during a visit to Saudi Arabia this week.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said the issue would come up when Jamali meets Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, on a five-day visit starting on Thursday.
“Saudi Arabia is such an important country (that)...we would discuss it with it,” Khan told a weekly news briefing when asked if the issue of sending troops to Iraq would come up. He said Jamali would also discuss the recent thaw in Pakistan’s relations with India and the situation in Afghanistan.
Pakistan, a key ally in what Washington calls its “war on terror” has been asked by the United States to send around 10,000 soldiers to Iraq to help secure the postwar peace.
Khan said Islamabad had agreed to send troops to Iraq only under the auspices of the United Nations or the Organization of the Islamic Conference, of which Saudi Arabia is a key member.
The issue of sending troops is highly sensitive in Muslim Pakistan where hard-line Islamic groups have said it would be “against the orders of the Qur’an and the collective conscience of the Islamic community.”
Khan also said Foreign Minister Mian Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri would leave on Thursday on a two-day visit to Afghanistan, where officials accuse Pakistan of assisting a resurgent Taleban guerrilla movement -- something Islamabad denies.
Referring to recent attacks Afghan officials say were orchestrated from Pakistan, Khan said these meant Kasuri’s visit would have “added importance”.
He said there were large numbers of Taleban fighters still in Afghanistan and there could be remnants in Pakistan too, but added: “The Taleban pose a threat to both Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said. “It is a common fight and we should coordinate our strategies and work together and not find refuge in accusations.”
Khan’s comments come on the heel of two bloody weekend attacks in southeast Afghanistan’s Paktika province, the latest in a wave of violence blamed on rebels allegedly crossing from Pakistan’s remote tribal borderlands.
The separate attacks by alleged Taleban militants saw a total of 25 people killed, including Afghan troops and attackers, bringing to 60 the number of people killed in violence across Afghanistan in the past week.
Afghan officials repeatedly charge that anti-government rebels waging a guerrilla campaign against Afghan and Western targets, including aid groups, are operating out of Pakistan. Some allege that Pakistani intelligence agents support the rebels in order to destabilize the administration of President Hamid Karzai.
Pakistan has rejected the charges, pointing to its capture of some 500 suspected members of the Al-Qaeda terror group in 20 months as proof of its efforts to rein in extremists.
Government and military officials also point to a tripartite commission it set up with Afghanistan and the United States in April as a forum for resolving border problems.
The volatile 2,400-kilometer (1,488 mile) frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan is at the center of fresh tensions between the neighbors, whose relationship is already strained by Islamabad’s past support of the harsh Taleban regime, which was ousted by US-led forces in late 2001.
Border incidents are also straining Pakistan’s alliance with the United States in its war on terror.
Afghan officials frequently report catching or killing bands of rebels crossing the border and believe they operate out of the Pakistani borderlands.
US military bases along the Afghan side of the border are attacked with rockets on an almost daily basis. The US-led coalition has complained of frustration in its 20-month hunt for Taleban and Al-Qaeda fugitives, alleging they often flee into Pakistan.
The US-led hunt resulted in casualties among Pakistani troops earlier this month, when two soldiers were killed at a border post by fire from US forces pursuing attackers fleeing into Pakistan.
