KABUL/ISLAMABAD, 5 January 2007 — A one-day visit by Pakistan’s prime minister to Afghanistan failed to bridge differences between the neighbors over how to fight terrorism.
At a joint news conference in the Afghan capital yesterday, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan were clearly at odds over some fundamental issues affecting relations between the two countries.
Pakistan wants to lay mines and build a fence at parts of the Afghan-Pakistan border to keep terrorists from crossing over to Afghanistan. Afghanistan opposes the idea.
Aziz said fencing and mining the border had become imperative for Pakistan and for maintaining security of NATO and US soldiers operating in Afghanistan.
The prime minister also said Kabul should not object to the project as “we will build a secure fence and mine our own territory.”
Karzai opposed the idea altogether. “Mining and fencing the border will not prevent terrorism, but it will divide the two nations,” he said at the news conference.
Karzai also acknowledged that the relations between the two neighbors have hit a low point, saying the countries will try to bridge the growing gap in coming months.
The Afghan president said: “If schools continue to get burned in Afghanistan, if teachers continue to get killed, students get discouraged, that means that our meetings are useless. If that situation persists that means that our meetings produce no results.”
Extremists are particularly active in Afghan provinces adjoining Pakistan and there have been numerous cases of schools being burned by the Taleban. Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of not checking the activities of Taleban and its sympathizers on its soil.
Islamabad insists it does all it can to stop them.
Aziz called on Afghan authorities to look inside their own country for sources of the growing insurgency that threatens Karzai’s government and has brought into question the international effort at stabilizing the war-torn country. Some 4,000 people died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan in 2006, the most since the US-led invasion in 2001.
Aziz said Pakistan agreed with Karzai to begin repatriating three million remaining Afghan refugees still in Pakistan, although no starting date was given.
He said Pakistan would increase its grant assistance to Afghanistan by $50 million.
The two countries agreed to form separate commissions to look into the possibility of convening Loya Jirgas (grand assemblies) of tribal elders to curtail militant activities on the border. Earlier Pakistan had proposed a joint commission.
