KARACHI: Kabul and Islamabad should make joint efforts to politically isolate the Taliban, according to Dr Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister of Afghanistan.

Movement of militants across the porous Pak-Afghan border was neither in the interest of Pakistan nor of Afghanistan. However, there were no quick fixes, said Dr Abdullah, who polled 31 per cent of the valid votes cast in the recent Afghan presidential elections, but pulled out of the run-off poll.

In an interview with DawnNews on Friday, he said political will and resolve were needed to deal effectively with the growing insurgency.

Dr Abdullah was of the view that insurgency in Afghanistan had grown so much that the security situation could not be improved without deployment of additional US troops. In an apparent criticism of President Hamid Karzai, he said the international community needed a credible ‘Afghan partner’ to ease the crisis.

About India’s growing involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s concerns over it, the 49-year-old former minister said rather diplomatically that all the three countries needed to curb terrorist violence that affected their peoples.

The Afghans had learnt their lessons the hard way, Dr Abdullah said. They sought good governance, access to justice and development, and security — all of which would contribute to their survival.

About the reasons for not contesting the run-off poll, he said he had proposed certain reforms in the Independent Election Commission to ensure credibility and transparency. One of the conditions was the sacking of Azizullah Lodin, the head of the commission.

‘When my conditions were not met, I quit the race,’ he remarked. A UN-backed electoral commission in Afghanistan later confirmed what many had suspected, that there was considerable fraud in the election. When asked if he could join a unity government with President Karzai, as the latter had proposed in his inauguration speech, Dr Abdullah said the incumbent did not agree with his programme for change.