After Attacks in Pakistan, Worries in Afghanistan About Security
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SALMAN MASOOD
Published: November 27, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — As investigations began on Sunday into the NATO attacks on two military outposts that killed at least 25 Pakistani soldiers, Afghan officials expressed concern about the possible long-term damage to regional security.
Afghan Foreign Ministry officials on Sunday urged Pakistan to not follow through on threats to boycott a conference on Afghanistan’s future that is scheduled for Dec. 5 in Bonn, Germany. “We hope that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan will participate in the Bonn conference because the conference for us is the most important political event of the year,” a ministry spokesman, Janan Mosawi, said.
Pakistan’s participation is considered vital, officials said, given the leverage that it maintains over some of the Taliban factions fighting inside Afghanistan.
A spokeswoman of the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs said no decision had been made about attending the conference. “The matter is being examined,” the spokeswoman said.
In Washington, American officials were trying to assess how the attacks had happened. According to preliminary reports, allied forces in Afghanistan engaged in a firefight along the border and called in airstrikes. Senior Obama administration officials were also weighing the implications on a relationship that took a sharp turn for the worse after a Navy Seal commando raid killed Osama bin Laden near Islamabad in May and that has deteriorated since then.
NATO was also investigating after saying on Saturday it was likely that NATO-led airstrikes had led to the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers. “This was a tragic unintended incident,” the group’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in a statement. “We will determine what happened and draw the right lessons.”
Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, called Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday to convey the “deep sense of rage felt across Pakistan,” according to a government statement. The border attacks negate “the progress made by the two countries on improving relations and forces Pakistan to revisit the terms of engagement,” Ms. Khar was quoted as saying. Earlier, Pakistani military officials had called the attacks unprovoked acts of aggression by the United States.
Pakistan buried the dead soldiers on Sunday as thousands of protesters gathered outside the American Consulate in Karachi. A Reuters reporter said the angry crowd shouted “Down with America,” and one man climbed on the wall surrounding the heavily fortified compound and attached a Pakistani flag to the barbed wire.
One funeral, led by the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was held at the Corps Headquarters in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa Province in northwest Pakistan near the site of the attacks. General Kayani also visited soldiers who were injured in the attacks.
On Saturday, the Pakistani government ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to vacate the drone operations it runs from Shamsi Air Base in western Pakistan within 15 days. It also closed the two main NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, including the one at Torkham. NATO forces receive roughly 40 percent of their supplies through that crossing, which runs through the Khyber Pass, and Pakistan gave no estimate for how long the routes might be shut down.
On Sunday, the state-run news media quoted Rehman Malik, the Pakistani interior minister, as saying that the NATO supply lines had “been stopped permanently.” Mr. Malik said NATO containers would not be allowed to cross the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Hundreds of trucks remained stalled at border crossings, The Associated Press reported, leaving them vulnerable to militant attacks. About 150 trucks were destroyed during attacks about a year ago after Pakistan closed one Afghan border crossings for about 10 days in retaliation for a helicopter strike that killed two Pakistani soldiers.
This time, The A.P. said, Pakistan has closed both its crossings, and nearly 300 trucks carrying coalition supplies were backed up at Torkham and at Chaman in Baluchistan Province in the southwest.
The Pakistani government also lodged a protest with Afghanistan on Sunday about the “use of Afghan territory against Pakistan,” according to government officials. The Afghan government was urged to take steps to ensure such attacks would not be repeated.
The Bonn conference, to which more than 50 countries are sending representatives, had been intended to showcase the international commitment to Afghanistan’s security as well as its sovereignty. If Pakistan, which is widely seen as a seedbed for many Afghan insurgents, refuses to participate, Western diplomats and military officials said, there would be little doubt that the insurgency would continue.
Mr. Mosawi described the conference as important “in terms of the vision the Afghan government will be sharing with the international community, with the region in the 10 years after transition.”
“Pakistan’s participation for us is extremely important. and we hope that they will continue as they have agreed to at the Foreign Ministry level in Bonn,” he said.
Mr. Mosawi said that the Afghan government had been contacted by the Pakistani ambassador in Kabul, Afghanistan, but would not elaborate and did not respond to questions asking whether the Afghan government had been asked to take steps to limit NATO military activity on the Pakistani border.
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and Salman Masood from Islamabad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/world/asia/afghanistan-worries-after-attacks-in-pakistan.html
---------- Post added at 03:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:43 PM ----------
Look likes he had drink too much.
