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Kasuri to push jirga plan

Nirupama Subramanian

Pakistan Foreign Minister begins visit to Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri began a three-day visit to neighbouring Afghanistan on Thursday during which he will hold up his Government's peace deals with militants in tribal areas as a possible model for replication in Afghanistan.

Amid continuing concern that his Government is not doing enough to rein in the Taliban on its side of the Durand Line that separates the two countries, Mr. Kasuri will also hold talks on a jirga plan for tribals from both sides of the border to meet and discuss ways of ending the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai proposed the cross-border jirga at the tripartite meeting with U.S. President George Bush and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf at the White House in September, and sees it as a way of finding peace in his country.

Allegation denied

Afghanistan believes that the Taliban insurgency derives strength from and sanctuary in Pakistan, an allegation that Gen. Musharraf has repeatedly denied.

He concedes there may be "elements" in Pakistan's border areas helping the Taliban in Afghanistan but maintains that his security forces are doing everything to check them. In November, 80 persons were killed when a madrassa in the Bajaur tribal area in north-west Pakistan was bombed. The Pakistan military said it carried out the bombing after receiving information that the seminary was training suicide bombers.

But Gen. Musharraf is firm that the Taliban is essentially an "Afghan problem" for which Kabul and the international community must find a "holistic" solution.

According to him, military force cannot solve the problem by itself unless accompanied by a "political component" and the economic reconstruction of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is the strongest.

As a model solution, Pakistan is offering its own experiment in North and South Waziristan in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where it was engaged in military operations against the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda as part of the "war on terror" but has now struck "peace deals" with the militants.

Earlier this week, the Foreign Ministry said it was not Mr. Kasuri's mission to suggest what Afghanistan should do but he would certainly talk about how Pakistan had dealt with the Taliban problem in its own tribal areas.

Responding to the concern that Pakistan would use the jirga to legitimise the Taliban, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said as the idea for the jirga came from Mr. Karzai, "he would have thought it through."

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