Afghanistan-Pakistan Talks 'Positive'
Pakistan's president on Thursday said three-way talks in Washington with his U.S. and Afghan counterparts had "positive results" and Pakistan and Afghanistan decided to increase cooperation in fighting terrorism.
After arriving in London, Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Wednesday's dinner meeting with President Bush and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai was "held in a very good atmosphere, in a pleasant atmosphere."
Musharraf's comments during a press conference contrasted with criticisms made by both him and Karzai against each other in recent days over efforts to combat Taliban and al Qaeda-led violence in their neighboring countries.
"The meeting that I held with President Bush and Hamid Karzai last night was very good," Musharraf said in comments aired live on Pakistani TV. "It was decided that we should have a common strategy. We have to fight terrorism. We have to defeat it, defeat it jointly."
Musharraf said that it was decided that Afghanistan and Pakistan should have better intelligence coordination and interaction so that "we can meet the challenges" of fighting militants.
"In this way it had good results and I think, God willing, there will be no opposition like this in the future," he said.
Following the dinner hosted by Mr. Bush, Karzai and Musharraf attended a press conference with the U.S. president, but neither spoke.
Musharraf and Karzai shook hands with the U.S. president, but not each other.
The frosty display followed days of finger-pointing by both leaders, who are key U.S. allies in the war on terror.
Karzai has accused Pakistan of not doing enough to curb Islamic schools that produce militants, while Musharraf said the Afghan leader was ignoring large sectors of his war-ravaged country's population.
The Afghan government, along with some Western diplomats in Islamabad, has also complained that the Pakistani military doesn't do enough to crack-down on militants they say are based in the country's border region and cross over to launch attacks in Afghanistan.
Musharraf's government has generally responded by denying that militants are launching such cross-border raids with any frequency, and saying the insurgency in Afghanistan is largely a home-grown problem.
Domestic Pakistani politics play a huge role in how that defense-crucial border region — where many believe al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is hiding — is handled, or not handled, by the government.
North Waziristan, as the mountainous region is known, is semi-autonomous, governed primarily by local militias.
The area has been a thorn in the side of Musharraf's national government, militarily and politically, for years as bloody skirmishes raged between the military and the militias — seeking greater autonomy and a greater share of the wealth accumulated from the region's natural resources, and the strong Pakistani economy.
On Sept. 5, the Pakistani government reached a truce with the militias in North Waziristan, which effectually stopped the fighting.
But in a turn of events that is not likely to help along the new-found "good atmosphere" created in Washington between Karzai and Musharraf, a Pakistani political leader said Wednesday that Taliban leader Mullah Omar purportedly approved that truce deal himself.
A Pakistani government official and militants from the region rejected the claim, made by Latif Afridi, a lawyer and top official from the pro-Pashtun Awami National Party.
Militants from the deposed Taliban regime are usually quick to claim responsibility for the attacks against NATO and Afghan forces inside Afghanistan, and Omar is near the top of most-wanted lists in the U.S. and Afghanistan.
The real efficacy of the three-way dinner meeting at the White House will be judged by military commanders on the ground, particularly along the border, who will see very clearly whether the two countries' cooperation does, in fact, increase — or if the lack of a handshake in Washington was a harbinger of more finger-pointing, and bloodshed, on the horizon.