ISLAMABAD, Oct 17: Pakistan reaffirmed its belief here on Wednesday that as soon as the Taliban government accepted the UN Security Council resolution demanding surrender of Osama bin Laden to the US for trial and joined in efforts to establish a broad-based government in Kabul, the Afghan war would fast come to an end, bringing durable peace in its wake.

The foreign office spokesman at his daily press briefing on Wednesday said that there was convergence of views at the talks between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Pervez Musharraf on Afghan situation and the regional problems.

Pakistan viewed with appreciation Mr Powell’s reaffirmation of a widely accepted fact that Kashmir issue was central to relations between Pakistan and India.

Spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said the United States and the United Nations could play an important role in helping to resolve the dangerous situation in South Asia which threatened peace in the region and the world.

The FO spokesman accused India of adopting an attitude of persistent hostility towards Pakistan and recalled that it was out of malice and in order to malign Islamabad that it enacted a number of incidents of terrorism through “renegades”, sponsored allegedly by Indian agencies, whenever any important visit or event was to take place in Pakistan.

It was the timing of most of these incidents which proved Indian hostility towards Pakistan which had made repeated overtures to New Delhi to reduce tensions.

He recalled President’s recent telephone call to Indian premier and telephonic conversation between the foreign ministers, suggesting Islamabad’s willingness to promote peaceful ties.

The spokesman said that Pakistan had to seal its borders with Afghanistan in order to prevent uncontrolled influx of Afghan refugees.

Pakistan was already hosting about three million Afghan refugees and about 1.5 million more were said to be trying to come over which Islamabad found unbearable. However, Afghans holding valid travel documents and women, children and even wounded or sick persons were being accepted on humanitarian grounds.

The spokesman told a questioner that Rabita-al-Alam-i-Islami set up to facilitate repatriation of stranded Pakistanis from Bangladesh, had been dormant for quite some time. The government had also contributed fifty million rupees to the Rabita fund but it had now been frozen and it intended to get it audited through international auditors.

The spokesman, when quizzed about the talk of a possible broad-based government in Afghanistan with some Taliban representatives included in it, said it did not run counter to the policy that Pakistan had been pursuing with regard to the resolution of Afghanistan imbroglio.

He recalled that though Pakistan did not recognize governments in Kabul during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, had held talks with the opponents in search of a settlement in that country.

No one outside Afghanistan could claim that former Afghan monarch Zahir Shah was not an Afghan though he stayed for many years out of his country since his overthrow in 1973. The spokesman indicated that Zahir Shah had a relevance to efforts to resolve the current Afghanistan crisis and pointed out that his envoy leading a small delegation to Islamabad, had held talks with President Musharraf and other high-level officials.

The spokesman said that as far as he was concerned, he could categorically state that Taliban foreign minister Abdul Wakil Muttawakil was not in Islamabad holding talks with the Pakistani officials.