February 13, 2002	Wednesday	Ziqa’ad 29, 1422

PARIS, Feb 12: The recent visit to Pakistan by Afghanistan’s interim leader Hamid Karzai, and “forgiving remarks” he made there, have caused friction within the Kabul administration, a senior Afghan diplomat said on Tuesday.

Mehrabuddin Mastan, charge d’affaires at the Afghan embassy in Paris, said that many Afghans had expected President Pervez Musharraf to offer an apology for his country’s “role in the destruction of Afghanistan” and would have preferred him to visit Kabul, rather than for Karzai to go there.

“Mr Karzai’s visit to Pakistan has created friction, and raised questions for the people as to why he went there so hastily in the first place, and why he made such forgiving remarks,” Mastan said in an interview.

During his visit last week, Karzai notably said: “We Afghans have nothing but goodwill for Pakistan, it is from the heart.”

Mastan commented that “the trip was a foreign policy mistake, and it is hard to explain whether it was deliberate or due to lack of experience.”

The veteran diplomat, however, noted that the Kabul authorities had talked the trip down internally in a bid to avoid harming national unity.

“The people criticize the trip to a country which has destroyed Afghans and the hands of which are still stained with Afghan blood,” said Mastan.

Mastan belongs to the powerful faction of the Northern Alliance, which dominates Karzai’s six-month interim administration.

Mastan also said that Pakistan’s religious party leaders, Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, and the former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Hamid Gul, should be imprisoned for their roles in “strengthening” the Taliban.

“These people should have been in Guantanamo prison by now,” Mastan said.—AFP