KABUL, April 19: The United States is willing to help resolve any disputes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, US presidential envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said on Saturday following a border clash earlier this week.
“We would like good relations between these two countries, we want problems to be resolved in a friendly cooperative atmosphere and America is willing to play a constructive role ... ,” he told reporters at a press conference inside the heavily fortified US embassy.
“Instability in Afghanistan, in our view, is not in Pakistan’s interests,” said Mr Khalilzad, who is President George Bush’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghan and Pakistani forces clashed Wednesday around the village of Ghulam Khan in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost province.
US military spokesman Colonel Roger King on Friday confirmed the presence of Afghan and Pakistani forces in the area but said the only shots fired had been warning shots. Mr King had stressed that the border was “ill-defined” in the area.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Pakistani troops had not crossed into Afghan territory and underlined Islamabad’s support for the Afghan government.
Khalilzad said success of the new Afghanistan was in “America’s interest and any effort that undermines that stability that threatens it is a challenge to American interests.”
He said a recent wave of attacks on foreign and government targets in southern and eastern Afghanistan could be due to Taliban, Al Qaeda and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar extremists taking advantage of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
“The increase in numbers of incidents may be due to the fact that we have been active too. We’ve had a number of operations against the Taliban and others in recent weeks,” he said.
“I think the evolution of the situation in Iraq will itself have a positive effect (on Afghan security). I think this must be a big disappointment to those people who were hoping for a long protracted conflict to use to incite the population here.”
The envoy said Washington was determined to make sure Afghanistan succeeded and not repeat the mistakes of the past, when the country was effectively abandoned after invading Soviet troops withdrew in 1989.
“We are certainly, as far as the United States is concerned, committed to staying the course to make sure that Afghanistan succeeds,” said Khalilzad.
“And there is every determination that we will stay the course because we know the impact of the alternative — we’ve been there, we’ve done that, we’re not going to make the mistake that was made in the 1990s,” he said.
He also urged international donors to fulfil their pledges of aid as Afghanistan rebuilds after 23 years of conflict.—AFP
