Mixed Messages
clear messages
KABUL, July 16 --
..."The people of Afghanistan and the international community have come to the reality that Pakistan intelligence institutions and its army have become the largest center for breeding and exporting terrorism and extremism to the world and particularly to Afghanistan,” the council of cabinet ministers said in a written statement issued Monday.After Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused Pakistan’s ISI of supporting Taliban attacks, his government on Tuesday cancelled scheduled meetings with Pakistani officials on border-control issues.
...U.S. and Afghan soldiers withdrew from the makeshift outpost near the remote village of Wanat as Taliban fighters swarmed the area near the border of the eastern provinces of Nuristan and Kunar, NATO and Afghan officials said Wednesday. An unspecified number of NATO and Afghan troops remain in the region near the edge of Pakistan’s western border, said Capt. Mike Finney, a spokesman for NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.
Reports from the area said that hundreds of Nato troops were airlifted across the mountains from the village of Lowara Mandi, which has been an important base for cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. Heavy artillery and armoured vehicles were also being moved into position.
The deployment followed a claim by the Afghan Government on Monday that the Pakistani Army and its spy agency had become “the world’s biggest producers of terrorism and extremism”. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry accused Kabul of creating an “artificial crisis to satisfy short-term political expediencies”.
President Bush said yesterday that the US would investigate the Afghan claims to “get to the bottom of the allegation”. He said that he was troubled by the movement of extremists from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
The Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said it was probably a routine movement and the media had created “unnecessary hype”.
..."It’s a gift that they’re coming here on our land and making it easy for us to kill our enemies, the enemies of Muslims,” Taliban spokesman, Maulvi Omar, told [al]Reuters.
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