Pakistan told Afghanistan on Friday it was "preposterous" to think
Islamabad could deliver the Taliban's leader to the negotiating table
and warned the neighboring nation against "ridiculous" expectations
about peace talks.
The public comments by Pakistan's Foreign
Minister Hina Rabbani Khar were an unusually harsh upbraiding for the
diplomatic world, where such quarrels usually play out behind closed
doors. They reflected Pakistan's anger at repeated allegations by
Afghanistan and the U.S. that it is harboring the Taliban's leadership
on its territory.
Khar spoke following talks between Pakistan and
Afghanistan in Islamabad that were supposed to identify specific steps
Pakistan would take to facilitate peace negotiations, but ended in
apparent acrimony.
It was a serious setback for a peace process
that the United States is strongly promoting as a way to end the
decade-old Afghan conflict and allow it to withdraw most of its combat
troops by 2014 without the country further descending into chaos.
The
foreign minister said Pakistan supports an Afghan-led peace process but
cautioned against Kabul expecting too much in terms of Islamabad's
ability to provide them access to the Taliban's leaders.
"If you have unrealistic, almost ridiculous expectations, then you don't have common ground to begin with," said Khar.
Pakistan
is seen as key to the process because much of the Taliban leadership,
including chief Mullah Omar, is believed to be based in the country, and
the government has historical ties with the group. Analysts say
Pakistan can either help the talks or act as a spoiler.
But
Islamabad has always denied Taliban leaders are using its territory and
rejected allegations that the Pakistani government has maintained its
links to the group, frustrating Afghan and American officials who say
Pakistan is not aggressively going after the terror group.
It's
unclear whether Karzai asked Pakistan for help getting to Omar during
his current visit to Islamabad, and he made no public mention of the
cleric. But he has called on Pakistan to facilitate contact with Omar
and other Taliban leaders in the past.
The presidents of
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran held a three-way summit in Islamabad over
the past two days that focused on Taliban peace talks and other
regional issues. Pakistan and Afghanistan also held bilateral meetings
on the side of the summit, which ended Friday.
The Pakistani
foreign minister indicated her government was still uncertain on exactly
what role Afghanistan wanted Islamabad to play in the peace
negotiations, saying "they have not conveyed that clarity to us."
In
the past, Afghan officials have said they want Islamabad to offer
tangible assistance, such as giving Taliban representatives safe passage
to meeting sites outside of Pakistan. Afghan officials have also said
that they want Islamabad to grant access to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a
top-ranking Taliban official who was captured in Pakistan in 2010. His
arrest reportedly angered Karzai because Baradar had been in secret
talks with the Afghan government.
The Afghan president has said he
has been seeking Pakistan's help in the peace process for some time,
but that so far, it has not provided much more than words of support.
"What
we need now is to formulate a policy that is actionable and
implementable, and actually act upon it," Karzai said at a press
conference Friday featuring Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Pakistani foreign minister's
comments came as she spoke to reporters after the news conference.
Khar
said that any expectation that Pakistan can deliver the Taliban's chief
for talks is "not only unrealistic, but preposterous."
Asked
about reports that the most recent discussions between Afghanistan
President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani officials were confrontational,
Khar said, "The talks were very, very useful, and if they are hard, that
is fine."
"We need to have some hard talks," she said.
Many
analysts believe Pakistan has maintained links with the Taliban because
it is seen as a key ally in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw,
especially in countering the influence of Islamabad's neighbor and
archenemy, India. Pakistan helped the Taliban seize power in Afghanistan
in the 1990s.
That history has contributed to the tense
relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ties were strained
further last year when a suicide bomber assassinated former Afghan
President Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul. He had been serving as
Afghanistan's envoy to Taliban peace talks, and Afghan officials accused
Pakistan of playing a role in the killing — allegations it denied.
There have been some signs that momentum for Taliban peace talks has been growing.
The
Taliban are setting up an office in the tiny Gulf state of Qatar in the
first step toward formal negotiations. Also, the Obama administration
is considering releasing five top Taliban leaders from the U.S.
detention center in Guantanamo Bay as a starting point for talks.
But the process has also been riddled with rumor and uncertainty.
Karzai
initially resisted the U.S.-backed move by the Taliban to set up a
political office in Qatar because he felt the Afghan government had been
sidelined and not kept fully apprised of the process of getting an
office established. He said he preferred Saudi Arabia, and members of
the Afghan government's peace council have said that while the political
office might be in Qatar, actual talks could take place in Saudi Arabia
or another location.
Tension between Pakistan and the U.S. has
also complicated the process, especially following American airstrikes
in November that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani troops at two Afghan
border posts. AP
