PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen abducted Afghanistan’s ambassador-designate to Pakistan and killed his driver yesterday in a brazen ambush in the northwestern city of Peshawar, officials said.

Six attackers in a black car chased the vehicle of Abdul Khaliq Farahi, the Afghan consul general in Peshawar, forced it to pull over and shot his driver in the head, witnesses said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the incident was likely to heighten tensions over Afghan allegations that Pakistan is failing to crack down on Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants in its tribal border regions.

“The driver was killed in the firing, consul general Abdul Khaliq Farahi has been abducted,” Zahir Khan Babari, an official at the Afghan Consulate, told AFP.

The kidnappers were apparently aware of the Afghan diplomat’s movements, Babari said, adding: “They were waiting for him and when he came they seized him from his car.” Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry said it had expressed its concerns to the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul.

“We demanded that the Pakistani government do its utmost to free our diplomat,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen told AFP.

The Afghan diplomat had recently been promoted as ambassador to Pakistan, consulate official Babari said, adding that he was yet to take over the position since his papers were still with the Pakistani Foreign Ministry. Police said they had sealed off all entry and exit points to the troubled city near the Afghan border, which adjoins the rugged tribal belt.

The diplomat was heading from the consulate in the city center to his home in a plush suburb when he was attacked, police officer Banaras Khan said. “The driver was killed, it was an Afghan Consulate car. Gunmen then whisked him away in their car. I am on the spot, we are investigating,” Khan told AFP.

The information minister for Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, confirmed that Farahi had been kidnapped.

Witnesses said six people pursued the Afghan envoy in a black car. They forced Farahi out of the car and when the driver resisted they shot him dead. The attack came weeks after a US Consulate car was attacked in Peshawar in August. A diplomat in the car, Lynne Tracy, was unhurt because the vehicle was bullet-proof.

Suspected Taleban militants abducted Pakistani Ambassador to Kabul Tariq Azizuddin when he was driving from Peshawar to Afghanistan via the Khyber tribal district. The Pakistan envoy was released in May after 96 days of captivity.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to “honest cooperation” against terrorism after a massive suicide attack in Islamabad killed at least 60 people, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said yesterday.

Karzai, whose country has been hit by similar attacks, called Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani late Sunday to offer condolences for Saturday’s truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel, it said in a statement.

Karzai told Gilani the attack, which has been blamed on Al-Qaeda, “Shows that the only way to get rid of terrorism is widespread and honest cooperation in war against it,” the statement cited the Afghan leader as saying.

An Afghan official yesterday said Pakistan and Afghanistan are discussing a possible joint force to combat fighters in the remote border region they share.

Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said soaring violence has stretched the capabilities of US. NATO and Afghan troops, and violence had increased threefold from 2005 to 2007.

“2008 is going to be the highest among all,” he told reporters at the Pentagon. He said Afghanistan had proposed a joint military task force to operate on both sides of the border.

“We should have a combined joint task force of coalition, Afghans and Pakistanis to be able to operate on the both sides of the border,” he said.

Karzai is due to meet Zardari on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly in New York tomorrow, his office said.