New Delhi:
After the Wikileaks disclosures on the ISI-terror links, now a top Canadian diplomat has revealed that Pakistan's Army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, wants Indian consulates in the war-torn country to be closed and is even prepared to support suicide attacks.
Chris Alexander, who was Canada's ambassador in Kabul from 2003 to 2005 and later the deputy of the United Nations (UN) mission until 2009, has written in "the Globe and Mail" saying, "Gen. Kayani told Mr. Karzai this spring that the condition for peace in Afghanistan would be the closing of several Indian consulates. This is not empty rhetoric. Gen. Kayani is saying he wants to call the shots in Kabul. To do so, he is prepared to support the principal outfit launching suicide attacks in Afghanistan's cities. The Pakistan army under Gen. Kayani is sponsoring a large-scale, covert guerrilla war through Afghan proxies."
Recently, in an exclusive interview with NDTV, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, had said India will not be allowed to use Afghanistan as a staging ground to militarily threaten Pakistan. (Read & Watch: Wikileaks episode won't affect Pak's ties with US, says Haqqani)
When asked what role he thinks think India can legitimately play in Afghanistan without causing Pakistan to feel buffeted in, Haqqani replied, "I think that the best course for India in Afghanistan is to make sure that whatever they do there does not create misgivings in Pakistan, a little more transparency, a little more open discussion as neighbours that this is what we are about to do. It's a part of the confidence building that we need to do to overcome the misgivings of the past.
"Look, we all know that there are always issues that each side can raise with one another, complaints that one can have towards one another, but if the intention is to have a stable Afghanistan, a stable Pakistan, and a stable India, playing their respective roles, working together, then I think we can find a way of reassuring each other.
"In Afghanistan, as long as there is no significant military intelligence activity that Pakistan finds threatening, India of course will remain a country with which the Afghans will do business, and similarly, at some point in future, Pakistan itself looks forward to a normal trade relationship with India, but until we get there, we have to have a more reassuring posture towards one another. There are things Pakistan has to take India into confidence over just to be reassuring, and similarly India has to understand that it had to do that."
When NDTV asked Haqqani if it is fair to say that Pakistan wants and demands primacy in Afghanistan once the US engagement begins to scale down, he said, "Pakistan does not seek control over or primacy in Afghanistan. We want to be a friend to Afghanistan and a neighbour. We recognize Afghan sovereignty and we want Afghanistan's internal politics to remain Afghanistan's internal matter.
"At the same time, we are concerned like any other country would be about not letting Afghanistan be used as a military or intelligence staging ground, that would interrupt our own security, and very frankly even that in the very long term future, and I'm not talking about tomorrow, in the very long term future, if we have greater confidence on each other and India and Pakistan have reached a point where we start trusting each other, then even those issues would slowly start disappearing, but our concerns are not very dissimilar to what would have been American concerns. If for example the Soviet union had started creating a military or intelligence base in Mexico or in Canada during the cold war, so I think that the onus of creating trust lies on both sides, and in the case of Afghanistan, our Indian neighbours can find a way of reassuring Pakistan so that this does not become another sort of sore point between our two countries."
Chris Alexander, who was Canada's ambassador in Kabul from 2003 to 2005 and later the deputy of the United Nations (UN) mission until 2009, has written in "the Globe and Mail" saying, "Gen. Kayani told Mr. Karzai this spring that the condition for peace in Afghanistan would be the closing of several Indian consulates. This is not empty rhetoric. Gen. Kayani is saying he wants to call the shots in Kabul. To do so, he is prepared to support the principal outfit launching suicide attacks in Afghanistan's cities. The Pakistan army under Gen. Kayani is sponsoring a large-scale, covert guerrilla war through Afghan proxies."
Recently, in an exclusive interview with NDTV, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, had said India will not be allowed to use Afghanistan as a staging ground to militarily threaten Pakistan. (Read & Watch: Wikileaks episode won't affect Pak's ties with US, says Haqqani)
When asked what role he thinks think India can legitimately play in Afghanistan without causing Pakistan to feel buffeted in, Haqqani replied, "I think that the best course for India in Afghanistan is to make sure that whatever they do there does not create misgivings in Pakistan, a little more transparency, a little more open discussion as neighbours that this is what we are about to do. It's a part of the confidence building that we need to do to overcome the misgivings of the past.
"Look, we all know that there are always issues that each side can raise with one another, complaints that one can have towards one another, but if the intention is to have a stable Afghanistan, a stable Pakistan, and a stable India, playing their respective roles, working together, then I think we can find a way of reassuring each other.
"In Afghanistan, as long as there is no significant military intelligence activity that Pakistan finds threatening, India of course will remain a country with which the Afghans will do business, and similarly, at some point in future, Pakistan itself looks forward to a normal trade relationship with India, but until we get there, we have to have a more reassuring posture towards one another. There are things Pakistan has to take India into confidence over just to be reassuring, and similarly India has to understand that it had to do that."
When NDTV asked Haqqani if it is fair to say that Pakistan wants and demands primacy in Afghanistan once the US engagement begins to scale down, he said, "Pakistan does not seek control over or primacy in Afghanistan. We want to be a friend to Afghanistan and a neighbour. We recognize Afghan sovereignty and we want Afghanistan's internal politics to remain Afghanistan's internal matter.
"At the same time, we are concerned like any other country would be about not letting Afghanistan be used as a military or intelligence staging ground, that would interrupt our own security, and very frankly even that in the very long term future, and I'm not talking about tomorrow, in the very long term future, if we have greater confidence on each other and India and Pakistan have reached a point where we start trusting each other, then even those issues would slowly start disappearing, but our concerns are not very dissimilar to what would have been American concerns. If for example the Soviet union had started creating a military or intelligence base in Mexico or in Canada during the cold war, so I think that the onus of creating trust lies on both sides, and in the case of Afghanistan, our Indian neighbours can find a way of reassuring Pakistan so that this does not become another sort of sore point between our two countries."
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