WASHINGTON, July 9: The US and Pakistan will continue discussions on bringing peace to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border when Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri meets Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice here on Monday.
“Obviously, they will be continuing the dialogue they held in Islamabad late last month” on differences between Pakistan and Afghanistan over a sudden rise in insurgency along their border, said a senior State Department official when asked what the two top diplomats might discuss at their meeting.
The main focus would be on continuing the dialogue on bringing peace and stability to the border, he added.
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, who was in Washington earlier this week, told reporters that Ms Rice’s recent visit to the region had not been able to remove tensions between America’s two key allies in the war against terror.
“We are still waiting to see the results of that visit in our neighbour,” Mr Spanta said while claiming that terrorists continue to enter Afghanistan from Pakistan and “we don’t have the strength to go after the sources.”
Senior US officials told Dawn they believed President Gen Pervez Musharraf had devised a comprehensive plan for developing the Frontier province and this would be another subject that could be discussed at the Kasuri-Rice meeting.
“Americans are obviously interested in what’s happening in the NWFP and Balochistan,” said a senior Western diplomatic source. “They are also concerned about security problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
He noted that while Mr Kasuri’s outburst against Afghanistan at a joint briefing with Secretary Rice in Islamabad last month did not leave a good impression, “Afghan President Hamid Karzai is not being very helpful either with his outbursts against Pakistan.”
Recent reports in the US media have noted that Mr Karzai has failed to control the rapidly deteriorating law and order situation in his country and, instead of taking steps to improve the situation, he hides behind blaming Pakistan for all his troubles.
While the Americans were now learning to take Mr Karzai’s complaints with a pinch of salt, they believed that Pakistan could also take some steps to improve the situation, the source said.
One of their suggestion is to “bring economic development and rule of law” to the tribal areas. Some diplomatic observers see the suggestion for bringing the tribal areas “under rule of law” as asking for changing the autonomous status the areas have enjoyed since 1947.
