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US backs Pak-India dialogue, seeks regional solution ..

Posted on: Sat January 22, 2011

WASHINGTON   : The United States has said it encourages greater dialogue between Pakistan and India and expects discussion on all issues including regional solution to the Afghan conflict with Pakistani and Afghan foreign ministers at a trilateral meeting next month.

 We continue to do everything that we can to support a regional solution to the challenge of Afghanistan, Philip J Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs said at Washington s Foreign Press Center. Crowley, responding to a question in the context of Pakistani-Indian tensions vis-à-vis Afghanistan, said the Obama administration has encouraged both Islamabad-Kabul and Islamabad-New Delhi dialogues.

 We have encouraged Pakistan to develop its own stronger relationship and understandings with Afghanistan. And there has been an increase in dialogue between Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent months, and we continue to encourage that. And in turn, we continue to encourage greater dialogue between Pakistan and India, he stated. Crowley said, So we are doing all of those things. We have an important trilateral meeting coming up next month among the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. And all of these issues, I would expect, will be on the agenda.

Nato, last year, agreed on setting 2014 as date for complete transfer of security responsibility to Afghan forces. The Obama Administration plans to begin a conditions-based withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan July this year. Meanwhile, reconciliation with Afghan Taliban insurgents has been a major subject of discussions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Focusing on the regional dimension of the Afghan conflict, The Christian Science Monitor reported on Friday the resolution of the US war in Afghanistan is getting tangled up in one of the world s most stubborn rivalries between the South Asian powers, Pakistan and India.

 Pakistan cites India s influence in Afghanistan as one of its main concerns. And with Pakistan increasingly crucial to any military or diplomatic progress in the war, it s a concern that Washington has to manage, a New Delhi-datelined report in the newspaper said.

According to the report, some current and retired Pakistani officials are hinting that as both the war and the peace efforts become more and more difficult, Washington and its Afghan allies might do more to reassure Islamabad that India won t play a major role in a future Afghan settlement.  Quietly Washington has talked to the Afghan government about listening to Pakistan s concerns, experts say.

Islamabad worries about having to defend both its eastern and western borders if India uses Afghan soil to influence events inside Pakistan. Islamabad also says India uses its consulates in Afghanistan to conduct espionage, stirring up anti-government forces in Pakistan s frontier regions.

India did use Afghanistan to aid Balochistan separatists in the 1970s, Dr Marvin Weinbaum, an expert at The Middle East Institute, says but feels the Indian consulates in Afghanistan currently are listening posts.  Beyond security concerns, Pakistan worries that India has historically supported minority ethnic factions in Afghanistan, creating tensions with the more numerous Pashtuns who live on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The Afghan government appears to be taking further steps to ease Pakistan concerns about India, the Monitor report noted. President Hamid Karzai last year removed his intelligence chief, a powerful Tajik who was seen as wary of Pakistan and more sympathetic to India. Karzai also sent former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani as head of a High Peace Council to Pakistan earlier this month. Rabbani remains a powerful figure among the ethnic minority factions that resisted the Taliban in the 1990s, and though he has received Indian help in the past, he said the right things to put Pakistan at ease.

 What Rabbani said today was quite meaningful that no third country would be allowed to damage Afghanistan-Pakistan relations, said Abdul Basit, Pakistan s Foreign Ministry spokesman after meetings on January 05 between Rabbani and Pakistani officials.

Courtesy : Business Recorder