ISLAMABAD, May 11: Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri on Friday briefed European Union ambassadors based in Kabul and Islamabad on the current status of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations, and they all agreed that both countries should avoid ‘megaphone diplomacy’.
The ambassadors representing Germany, the EU, Portugal and Holland, collectively called on Mr Kasuri at the Foreign Office here on Friday afternoon.
The meeting that lasted for over an hour focused largely on the Ankara Summit talks between President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Mr Kasuri shared with them Pakistan’s perspective on the situation in Afghanistan, the efforts at strengthening border controls and the way forward, including the need to substitute poppy cultivation with another crop, sources privy to the meeting told Dawn.
The dominant view was that while most of the problems were essentially inside Afghanistan, the insurgents there may be getting some support from Taliban and foreign militants hiding in Pakistan’s tribal areas notwithstanding the government’s action against such elements, sources said.
On the Ankara Declaration, the ambassadors agreed with the foreign minister on the need for the two sides to refrain from making public statements blaming each other and avoiding the counter productive ‘megaphone diplomacy’, a statement said.
