“IT takes two to tango,” Hina Rabbani Khar said on Friday. “One day [the Afghans] require Pakistan’s assistance; the next day it is Pakistan which is working against them. Then how can Pakistan help them?” Just last week, the Foreign Office had denied reports from the sidelines of the Saarc summit that Prime Minister Gilani found President Karzai’s attitude in a bilateral meeting to be aggressive and accusatory. But in this latest press conference, the foreign minister did not hold back, expressing in remarkably direct language that Kabul’s recent statements have not been helpful. Earlier in the year the relationship seemed to be making progress, with Mr Gilani visiting Kabul in April with a high-level diplomatic and military team, and Mr Karzai in Islamabad in June to discuss reconciliation with the Taliban. But since a number of high-profile terrorist attacks in the Afghan capital and the assassination of former High Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani in September, public suggestions of Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban have been emerging from Kabul. The trilateral summit in Turkey had the potential to ease relations, especially given discussion of a joint investigation into the assassination, but doesn’t seem to have improved matters.