WASHINGTON, July 7: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan has not been able to remove tensions between America’s two key allies in the war against terror, says Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta.
Miss Rice travelled to Kabul and Islamabad late last month to press for better cooperation between the two countries following Afghanistan’s complaints that Pakistan was not doing enough to stop insurgents from using its tribal areas for carrying out terrorist attacks.
“We are still waiting to see the results of that visit in our neighbour,” Mr Spanta told reporters in Washington.
In a speech at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the Afghan foreign minister said Pakistan was doing an inadequate job in countering terrorism.
Later, while talking to reporters, Mr Spanta claimed that terrorists stream into Afghanistan from Pakistan and “we don’t have the strength to go after the sources.”
Urging Pakistan to do more to stop cross-border attacks, Mr Spanta said Pakistani troops in the region should be more vigilant.
The Afghan foreign minister, however, said that the terrorists hiding in this area could not have continued to carry out attacks without outside support. “We are convinced that the terrorists receive sustained support from beyond our borders,” he added.
“For this reason, Afghanistan considers active and sustained cooperation of the international community as pivotal in our success to combat effectively the menace of terrorism,” he said.
In his first trip to the United States since becoming foreign minister in April, Mr Spanta met Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and other senior administration officials to convey Afghanistan’s position on a sudden rise in insurgency this summer.
On Friday he was meeting Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr Spanta acknowledged that both “external and internal forces” were responsible for the spike in violence and presented, what he said, was a ‘new strategy’ to counter terrorism, based on three main elements: Firstly, he said, counterterrorism efforts should concentrate on centres of ideological and military training of the terrorists and their financial resources, all of which he described as being outside Afghanistan.
Secondly, Mr Spanta said, terrorists should be confronted inside Afghanistan in a sustained manner similar to the current Operation Mountain Thrust in southern Afghanistan; along with military operations, a rapid-deployment capability should be maintained; and once an area is freed of terrorist activities, security forces should be able to hold it.
Mr Spanta said the third component involves reconstruction in areas that have been cleared of the terrorist threat. Mr Spanta also acknowledged weakness in his own government, particularly Afghan security forces, for the surge in Taliban attacks.
