April 03, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25, 1429

BUCHAREST, April 2: Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Wednesday he wanted direct talks between his military alliance in Afghanistan and the new government in Pakistan.

With rows over troop numbers and deployments, and worries over the state of the porous Afghan-Pakistan border, Scheffer also dropped a broad hint he would soon head to Islamabad himself.

Speaking ahead of the formal opening of a Nato summit in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, Scheffer pleaded for more contact between the 47,000-strong Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) and the newly-elected government of Pakistan.

“Military-to-military contacts are good. We must complement a military dialogue with a political one. Nato (and) Isaf need a political dialogue with Pakistan because instability there breeds instability in Afghanistan,” he told foreign policy experts ahead of the summit opening dinner.

Scheffer added: “I look forward to going to Pakistan when the government is settled in.“We have a common fight against terrorism – my starting point is, Pakistan is part of the solution, not part of the problem.” Nato’s Afghanistan commitment has seen attention increasingly turn to north-western parts of Pakistan, from where the Taliban are allegedly directing the Afghan resistance.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, at the same event, criticised the previous Pakistani government.

“We were told democracy (in Pakistan) would inflame the radicals,” he said.

“The problem was the previous government in Pakistan was cracking down on the democrats, not the extremists.”—AFP