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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Afghan envoy threatens to take Pakistan to UN

By Wajid Ali Syed
June 24, 2017

WASHINGTON: Despite Pakistan's relentless insistence to intensifying bilateral cooperation, Kabul's ambassador to the US has threatened to take Pakistan to the United Nations alleging, once again, that Islamabad has been involved in supporting terrorism within Afghanistan.   

"The United Nations has conventions and rules for the use of proxies and what kind of actions can be taken against countries that do so; so United Nations would be the most appropriate venue for the time being," the Afghan ambassador, Hamdullah Mohib said talking to The News. He was, however, quick to subdue his threat when he immediately added that "right now we hope that we will be able to resolve issues [between the two countries]." 

Pakistan has been a victim of terrorism itself, and many a times presented coordinates of terrorists that attacked its soil to the Afghan government. When this correspondent put up the question about Pakistan's claims of terrorist sanctuaries in Afghanistan and that Afghan government has been blaming Pakistan for its own internal ills, the Afghan ambassador said that his country has proposed to have an 'international verifier'. "Let us have any country that Pakistan believes and trusts. Let them come and verify the claim that they think is a blame game. Let them come and see themselves."  

Upon inquiring that Pakistan has called for restoration of quadrilateral as well as bilateral dialogue yet Afghanistan has not paid any heed, Hamdullah maintained the accusatory tone, "we would like to see Pakistan to be more cooperative on brining stability and be in direct contact with or bring its discussions directly with the Afghan government rather than using non-state actors." 

Aizaz Chaudhry, Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, candidly countered Afghan envoy's allegations and referred to the Pentagon report released just this week. He pointed out that the report termed Afghanistan as the "highest concentration of militants and terrorist groups in the world." 

"Such volatile situation in Afghanistan is worrying for Pakistan," he said adding that any instability in Afghanistan was equally harmful to us, the region and the world. He urged the Afghan government again to quit the blame-game and focus on mutual cooperation against the common enemy, i.e. terrorists. He said that Islamabad has always offered a friendly hand to its neighbors. "We try to let Kabul know that peace in Afghanistan is important to and for Pakistan as well. Our leadership and our government is sincere in these efforts but unfortunately they blame their failures on us. They blame on Pakistan without any proof," the Pakistan ambassador said further adding that there are multiple venues available to take up such issues but the country prefers to discuss and resolve them on bilateral level."  

He said Afghanistan's political parties have publicly acknowledged that extremists have joined their country's security forces. Calling it a mantra from Afghanistan, the Pakistani ambassador maintained that the country would not respond to any such hostility. He called for restoration of a quadrilateral dialogue and establish mechanism for military and intelligence bilateral co-operation.