LAHORE, Dec 21: The Bonn agreement provides a chance for peace in Afghanistan, says former foreign minister Sardar Assef Ahmad Ali

“Its apparent imbalances will get corrected with the passage of time,” he said in his lecture on “Regional Situation and Options for Pakistan”, here on Friday.

Once the promised Loya Jirga is convened, every community in Afghanistan will have to settle for share according to its numerical strength.

According to him, one must realise that present ministries are only ceremonial. “There is no army or police force to be governed by the defence and interior ministers, respectively.”

Pakistan, he said, must wait and see what sort of Loya Jirga was convened and what it decided. Without outsiders’ interference, the Afghans would settle for their natural share of power, he hoped.

The former foreign minister said Pakistan had promoted favourites in Afghanistan when it should have anointed a Pushtoon, respected enough, to command allegiance of his community and ready to lead his fellow Pushtoons in case of any leadership vacuum. “At one stage, the ISI chief opposed the elevation of any Pushtoon to presidentship for the fear of reigniting the issue of Pushtoonistan.”

At another occasion, he said, Najib’s offer for cooperation was turned down. The intelligence failure was equally colossal when Dostum and Masood joined hands and attacked Kabul. The Pakistani intelligence agency only came to know when both armies actually invaded Kabul. These failures haunted Pakistan for many years to come.

Sardar Assef was of the view that the Taliban were neither controlled nor influenced by Pakistan. They proved to be fiercely independent and, in the same streak, committed some fatal mistakes like leasing out their country to a terrorist outfit like Al-Qaeda. They progressively got isolated in the world community but never realised it. These policies are always doomed to fail, he said.

About situation on eastern border, he said that frustration had been a dominant factor in Indian foreign policy for the last few months. After Sept 11, the world cast Pakistan into a role of the frontline state at the cost of the Indian ambitions. It naturally got frustrated.

“The Indian leadership also sees a ray of hope in the present situation because the whole struggle is being waged in the name of terrorism. It thinks that it can get Pakistan tagged as terrorist state and isolate it.

“Indian internal compulsions also play a role; it is facing opposition for getting some anti-terrorist laws passed. All these factors have forced the Indians to adopt a jittery attitude. The Indian government will not let this tension escalate into a war but try to take every advantage out of this situation,” he concluded.