“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.

So where do things go from here? The state of the relationship will not do much to help the revival of peace talks with the Taliban, which now seem to be in disarray. And as the region prepares for America`s withdrawal from Afghanistan, what role will Pakistan be able to play in this atmosphere of mistrust? There are a couple of things both sides can do. Afghanistan must not accuse Pakistan of involvement in incidents without concrete proof. Both countries need to make sincere efforts to stop cross-border raids. Pakistan should act on its offer of any possible cooperation with the assassination investigation. And the burden of history means that Pakistan will have to keep proving, through words and actions, that it is not interested in destablising Afghanistan. In the absence of such moves, this crucial relationship, at this crucial juncture, is unlikely to improve.