Pakistan will do anything for ‘Afghan’ peace

Pakistan said it was willing to do whatever Afghans wanted to end 10 years of war with the Taleban, but insisted the process should not be led by the Americans Pakistan said Thursday it was willing to do whatever Afghans wanted to end 10 years of war with the Taleban, but insisted the process should not be led by the Americans or any other foreign power. A day after talks with President Hamid Karzai billed as a fence-mending visit designed to ease frosty ties, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar sought to refute perceptions that Islamabad was an obstacle to peace. Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan is regarded with deep suspicion in many Western capitals given its long-standing ties to the Taleban, Haqqani network and other Islamist fighters, whose leaders are based in Pakistan. ‘We’re willing to do whatever the Afghans want or expect,’ Khar said when asked whether Pakistan was ready to push the Haqqani network towards peace talks, but stopped short of naming the group or commenting further. She said Karzai was due in Islamabad in the middle of the month and that she would travel with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to Qatar, where the Taleban has set up a liaison office for talks with the Americans. She said it was ‘not in anyone’s interest’ for Afghanistan to slide back into the chaos of the past, but said Pakistan had ‘so far’ not played any substantial role in the contacts there between the Americans and the Taleban. Analysts say that Kabul and Islamabad have felt sidelined by the Qatar contacts. Khar did not comment explicitly, but said it was imperative that the Afghans were central to any eventual peace process, still ‘miles away’. ‘Who can play this central role? Not Pakistan, the US, Germany, the UK, Qataris, Saudis or anyone, it has to be the Afghans.’ She was determined to distance from Pakistan being in any way an independent actor in an effective peace process. ‘It is Afghanistan to decide and as a friendly neighbour, it is our job and responsibility and will to stand strongly behind that. The only prerequisite that Pakistan has is that it should be an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-driven, Afghan-backed process which has the ownership of Afghan people.’ A leaked NATO report based on material from interrogations of more than 4,000 captured Taleban and Al Qaeda operatives, accused Pakistan’s security services of still backing the Taleban. Khar took a swipe, saying that media reports and leaks do not reflect Pakistan’s ‘dialogue’ with NATO and the United States. ‘Pakistan would not want to be seen to be working at counter purposes with the rest of the world, including the Westerners, NATO, ISAF, US. It will be in our interest to be able to assist them in whatever way we can,’ she said. She also signalled that Pakistan could shortly end a more than two-month blockade on NATO supplies entering Afghanistan for foreign forces. Islamabad shut the border and ordered a review of its US alliance after air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26, in what NATO and the US military later blamed on a series of mistakes by both sides. Responding as to when parliament would pass the review, she said: ‘I’m going to hopefully ensure and push it very hard that it is no later than within a week... first half of February is probable.’ ‘I cannot pre-empt what the parliament is going to decide but I would assume that should not be so much of a problem,’ she said when asked if the recommendations would include re-opening the border. Islamabad rejects any blame for the November strikes, which brought its relationship with the United States and NATO to an all-time low. When the route eventually re-opens, it is widely expected to tax NATO convoys carrying supplies shipped to its port in Karachi and trucked through its territory to landlocked Afghanistan. The United States has made increasing use of alternative routes into Afghanistan through the north in order to mitigate against losses in Pakistan.