Pakistan denies reports of efforts to split US, Afghanistan

[khyaal]

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan denied media reports on Wednesday that it was lobbying Afghanistan to drop its alliance with Washington and look to Islamabad and Beijing to forge a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuild its economy.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani “bluntly” told Afghan President Hamid Karzai to “forget about allowing a long-term US military presence in his country”, according to Afghans present at an April 16 meeting between the two men.
“Reports claiming Gilani-Karzai discussion abt Pakistan advising alignment away fm US are inaccurate,” Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington, Hussain Haqqani, wrote on his Twitter feed.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tehmina Janjua told Reuters: “It is the most ridiculous report we have come across.”
The Journal reported that Pakistan’s apparent bid to separate Afghanistan from the United States is a clear sign that tensions between Washington and Islamabad could threaten attempts to end the war in Afghanistan on favorable terms for the West.
The United States plans to start removing combat troops in July, with the bulk of them scheduled to be home by the end of 2014. Pakistan hopes to fill any power vacuum the Americans leave behind, considering Afghanistan to be within its traditional sphere of influence and a bulwark against its arch-rival India.
Pakistan’s military has had long-running ties to the Afghan Taliban and has repeatedly said that the road to a settlement of the 10-year conflict in Afghanistan runs through Islamabad.
The Journal reported that Pakistan no longer has an incentive to allow the United States a leading role in what it considers its own backyard.
At a rally to his party’s supporters on Wednesday, Gilani said Pakistan would maintain relations with the United States based on “mutual respect and interests”.
However, he added: “We’ll not compromise on national interests. We are not ready to compromise on our sovereignty, defence, integrity and self-respect, no matter how powerful the other is.”
Pakistan is now looking to secure its own interests in Afghanistan at the expense of the United States. Kabul and Islamabad also agreed at the meeting to include Pakistani military and intelligence officials in a commission seeking peace with the Taliban, giving Pakistan’s security establishment a formal role in any talks.
“This is part of General Kayani’s relentless outreach to President Karzai ever since the Obama administration announced withdrawal plans,” C. Raja Mohan, a prominent Indian foreign affairs expert, told Reuters, referring to Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani.
US ties with Karzai have soured since his election was called into question and over corruption. Relations with Pakistan have suffered over covert US actions, including missile attacks by drone aircraft that Washington says are necessary to hunt down al Qaeda and the Taliban, and which Pakistan sees as a violation of its sovereignty.
The Journal said the leaks about the April 16 meeting could be part of a campaign by a pro-US faction around Karzai to convince the United States to move more quickly to secure a strategic partnership agreement, which would spell out the relationship between Kabul and Washington after 2014.
“The longer they wait … the more time Pakistan has to secure its interests,” one of the pro-US Afghan officials told the Journal.
American officials are aware of the meeting, the paper reported, and assumed the leak was a negotiating tactic to secure more US aid to Afghanistan after 2014. The idea of China taking a leading role in Afghanistan “was fanciful at best,” the officials said.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/27/pakis...ghanistan.html

[ghundal]

Well, regardless of what Pakistan wants, it is in Afghanistan's interest to forge an alliance with China, seeing how they are the emerging and unchallenged power in the world. It is best Afghans think like the late Daud Khan, and ally the nation with powers such as China, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Brazil, the new Egypt, the soon to be free Iraq. Forgetting your obsession with Pakistan, it matters not what they want. What will serve Afghan long term interests, an alliance with the emerging powers of the world, or one with the disappearing powers of the world? The answer is logical. No one likes to board a sinking ship, and Afghanistan, I am confident will move in ther right direction.

And Afghanistan is in fact already forging a good relationship with China.

[ghundal]

Relationship with China is in our interest.

A relationship with China is in our interest. Seeing that they are an emerging power, it is the best way forward. Just because Pakistan has said it, does not mean it is wrong for Afghanistan to move towards China. This serves us well into the future, and I have said all along. We have to make our relationship with China good . A relationship with Russia and India is just as important. We need to think like Daud Khan did. He was the one of the best who knew how to outsmart the outsiders around Afghanistan. His ideas can serve as a way forward.





Pakistan asks Afghanistan to distance itself from United States, Afghan officials say





Pakistan asks Afghanistan to distance itself from United States, Afghan officials say - The Washington Post




By Joshua Partlow, Wednesday, April 27, 12:56 PM


KABUL — When Pakistan’s prime minister visited Kabul earlier this month, he spoke grandly to the public of an enduring friendship between neighbors and his country’s commitment to help Afghans in the grinding war with the Taliban.
But in private meetings, Yousaf Raza Gillani and the leaders of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service offered a startling proposal for cooperation: The Afghan government should distance itself from the United States and seek new allies, particularly China, according to current and former Afghan officials with knowledge of the meeting.

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Gillani read to President Hamid Karzai from a paper outlining Pakistan’s view that the U.S. military strategy had no prospect for success, that its troops antagonized the region and that the Afghan government should avoid any agreement that allows long-term American military bases in Afghanistan, according to the Afghans.
Because of the growing fiscal problems in the United States, Gillani argued, America was a power in decline, one without the ability to support Afghanistan and Pakistan in the future, and Afghans should look “for alternative allies,” said one senior Afghan official.
“That was the first time that the whole Pakistani state, military and civilian, spoke to us with one voice. That is important,” the Afghan official said. “If a country comes and puts its conditions on the table, we have to take that seriously.”
Although Pakistan is a U.S. ally, top Pakistani officials have long been deeply disdainful of U.S. policy in the region, and have been hedging their bets in case U.S. efforts in Afghanistan fail. Pakistan’s overture to the Afghan government — if Afghan accounts are accurate — marks one of the clearest signals to date that Pakistan is moving away from its partnership with the United States.
A spokesman for Gillani denied that the Pakistanis delivered any such message but would not discuss the content of the meeting. “Whatever you’re saying is not true,” Shabir Anwar said.
Pakistan’s foreign affairs ministry released a statement Wednesday saying that “Pakistan recognizes the key role of the United States in promoting stability, peace and harmony in Afghanistan.”
Obama administration officials said their reading of the meeting differed sharply from that of the Afghan officials. “Although the Pakistanis did caution the Afghans not to become too dependent on the Americans,” one official said, “they were reaching out to the Karzai government in a way that suggested they thought the time was right to move toward some kind of political settlement.”
“The good news,” the official said, “is that I think that there’s some prospect that Afghanistan will become the common ground on which the U.S. and Pakistan” can solidify their relationship.
The meeting, details of which were first reported in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, has sparked considerable debate in recent days among various factions in the Afghan government. Some see Pakistan’s offer as a turning point in the relationship with the two countries and one that shows promise. Others distrust Pakistan’s motives and believe Afghanistan cannot afford to abandon the United States in favor of partnerships with China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

If Daud Khan outsmarted everyone, why did he suffer entirely and indirectly increased the influence of leftists?

Afghanistan should have relations with every country in their region and outside of it. The more relations the better.

[Toramana]

If Daud Khan outsmarted everyone, why did he suffer entirely and indirectly increased the influence of leftists?

Afghanistan should have relations with every country in their region and outside of it. The more relations the better.

I agree BLS. Impartiality and friendly relations with all may be in its best interest provided if that is possible in the atmosphere of global rivalary.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

I agree BLS. Impartiality and friendly relations with all may be in its best interests provided if that is possible in the atmosphere of global rivalary.

Well as of now they need to maintain some cushion otherwise they will single-handedly be de-legitimatized politically in the region. So the more political allies the better.

[Toramana]

KABUL, Afghanistan — With Afghan discussions under way about the future involvement of the United States in the country and the prospect of long-term military bases, the Pakistani government has urged Afghanistan to distance itself from the West and tie its future more tightly to that of China and Pakistan, according to Afghans and Americans who are knowledgeable about a meeting between the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

During a landmark April 16 meeting here in Kabul, for which the most powerful figures in the Pakistani government flew to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan suggested that Afghanistan needed to look to China, a power in the ascendance, rather than hewing closely to the United States.

“There was a mention of China in the meeting, China as a country, as an emerging economic power, and that maybe we should reach out to a new global economic power,” said an Afghan official knowledgeable about the meeting. “And there was the suggestion that Afghanistan and Pakistan should strengthen relations.”
“You couldn’t tell exactly what they meant, whether China could possibly be an alternative to the United States, but they were saying it could help both countries,” the official said, referring to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The official asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the subject, which he was not authorized to speak about publicly.

The focus on China makes sense because it is a great power that would be acceptable to Afghanistan as an ally in ways that Russia never could be because of its history as a hated occupier of Afghanistan during the 1980s. And, from Pakistan’s point of view, China provides a counterbalance to India, its archenemy.
The effort to draw Afghanistan away from the United States and toward China was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, and it was one of several proposals floated by Pakistan at the meeting, according to the Afghan news media. In Afghanistan, a number of Pakistan’s other supposed proposals have gotten far more notice — although it is not clear that they were portrayed accurately or proposed at all.
All the leaks, however, reflect the fears of different Afghan factions about the direction of Afghanistan’s policy. One supposedly leaked list of Pakistan’s proposals stated that the Pakistanis had asked that members of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally based in Pakistan, be given a share of government power. People close to the Afghan government emphatically denied that Pakistan requested anything like that. “It’s ridiculous,” said a government official.

Another proposal apparently brought up again was an offer from Pakistan to train the Afghan National Army, said an American official knowledgeable about the talks, but who also did not wish to quoted by name because of the delicacy of the subject.
On Tuesday the Pakistani government released a statement saying that it rejected the “baseless assertions” made in the Wall Street Journal article and that “it fully supports an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process for peace and reconciliation,” as well as “the key role of the United States in promoting stability, peace and harmony in Afghanistan.”

The statement noted that a trilateral meeting of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States was scheduled to be held in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, early next month, with the purpose of having “strategic coherence and clarity.”
Stepping back, the jockeying seems reminiscent of the 19th-century Great Game days when larger powers sought to claim and influence Afghanistan. Then, Russia and England were vying for power. Today there are many more geopolitical actors: the United States, China, Iran, Russia, India and above all Pakistan, with which Afghanistan has close ties and deep enmities.

Pakistan, more than any other country, has leverage over Afghanistan’s future because so much support for the insurgency in Afghanistan emanates from Pakistan’s tribal areas and because Afghanistan is landlocked and will always be reliant on Pakistan for supplies. If the Pakistani government moved decisively to halt the insurgent activity, the war in Afghanistan would be greatly diminished.
For now the Afghan government is weighing the Pakistani requests, according to people close to the government and to its opponents. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a onetime presidential opponent of President Hamid Karzai, who served as Afghanistan’s foreign minister and has been allied with the United States, said he saw this as a moment when Afghanistan was faced with a choice about which way to go. He said that he had some knowledge of what was discussed at the meeting and that the Pakistanis had brought a document with them that outlined their thinking.
“They said that the goals of the United States are confusing and uncertain, the American force is not reliable, and their power is not a reliable power,” Dr. Abdullah said.

That perspective is influenced heavily by Pakistan’s increasingly negative view of the United States, said Mr. Abdullah — a point echoed by other officials knowledgeable about the meeting.
“One of the schools of thought in the Pakistani establishment is that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is not for the stabilization of Afghanistan, but is for seizing Pakistan’s nuclear assets in due time,” Mr. Abdullah said.

However, the critical question for Afghanistan is what would it get out of closer ties with Pakistan and more distance from the United States, he said. “They have failed to recognize Afghanistan as a sovereign country,” he said, referring to Pakistani government officials. “They still consider it as their back yard.”
“There isn’t anything in it for Afghanistan,” he added. “It doesn’t talk about the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, so it’s like giving Pakistan a protectorate role vis-à-vis Afghanistan,” he said.

People close to the talks said Mr. Karzai was considering Pakistan’s points carefully, but had not yet committed to most of them and viewed them with caution because of Pakistan’s long history of destabilizing Afghanistan through its support for the Taliban.

“The discussions were a good start; there are many issues to be discussed,” said an official close to the talks. “Of course it’s a long way to go because in terms of our past experience with Pakistan, we would need to see some serious, pragmatic steps.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/wo...er=rss&emc=rss