ISLAMABAD, Nov 28: Pakistan will welcome Prof Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Northern Alliance leader and Afghanistan president as accepted by the United Nations, if he wishes to visit Islamabad, a foreign office spokesman said here Wednesday.
Aziz Ahmad Khan, the FO spokesman, had been asked at a briefing to comment on the reported statement of Prof Rabbani in Dubai that he intended to visit Islamabad soon.
He said: “If Prof Rabbani wishes to visit Pakistan, he will be most welcomed.”
He recalled that the Northern Alliance leader had twice earlier visited in 1997 and 1998 when the Taliban government, recognized by Pakistan, was not accepted as the Afghanistan government by the United Nations. Prof Rabbani, a scholar, had also spent about a decade living in Pakistan before being elevated to the position of Afghan president.
The spokesman also confirmed that Pakistan had made a “contact” with Prof Rabbani in Dubai and an unidentified official had held a meeting with him.
The spokesman, however, was reluctant to share any more information with the press about the Dubai meeting for the time being.
Rabbani is on a visit to the United Arab Emirates, which once recognized the Taliban militia government in Kabul as the government of Afghanistan.
Mr Arif Ayub, Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul, was acting as the country’s observer at the Afghan leaders’ closed-door meeting in Bonn, the FO spokesman said.
Pakistan would be “satisfied” with an Afghan majority decision at the ongoing UN-initiated Bonn meeting on a post-Taliban authority in Kabul, the spokesman told a questioner, and expressed the hope that it would be a broad-based, multi-ethnic dispensation.
Major General Rashid Qureshi, the ISPR director-general, vehemently denied reports appearing in American newspapers which alleged that Pakistan military helicopters and aircraft had airlifted arms and Pakistani military personnel from Afghanistan before the Kunduz surrender last weekend. He described the reports as totally false.
Spokesman Aziz Khan, who had also served as ambassador in Kabul, said the presence of Pakistani military personnel in Afghanistan had all along been a fabrication by the Northern Alliance and India.
The DG ISPR said that on Tuesday afternoon, Indian army fired heavy guns on a civilian habitation in Rawalakot sector, killing three persons, including a child and injuring twenty others, including seven women.
Although Pakistan army had been exercising unilateral restraint, they had to fire back in self-defence, he said.
Indian offensive from across the LoC has been intensive over the past one month and a half.
