Afghan relations with Pakistan at new low

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan accused Pakistan on Thursday of placing unacceptable conditions on efforts to bring peace to the country after nearly 12 years of war, the latest in a series of barbed exchanges that has sunk relations between the two neighbors to a new low.

A breakdown in ties threatens to hinder — or even paralyze — attempts to lure the Taliban to the negotiating table. That's a key goal of the United States and its allies as they work for a peaceful solution in Afghanistan ahead of the final pullout of foreign combat forces in 20 months.

Afghanistan and its international backers consider Pakistan a critical player in bringing the Taliban and other militant groups into peace talks. Pakistan holds dozens of Taliban prisoners and has been accused of backing the insurgents in an effort to be able to exert influence in Afghanistan after foreign troops leave.

A senior Pakistan official said, however, that Islamabad remained committed to reconciliation.

That's why Pakistan recently released 26 Afghan Taliban prisoners from its jails, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistan remains in contact with members of the Taliban who have been empowered to talk about reconciliation, he said.

A failure to bring peace could endanger the stability of Afghanistan and much of the region, including Pakistan, which is fighting its own domestic Taliban insurgency.

"We have told the Pakistanis that they should support peace in Afghanistan not only for the sake of the Afghan people, but for their own sake," Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai told The Associated Press in an interview on Thursday.

He said Afghanistan wants a close, broad, strategic relationship with Pakistan, "but one between two equal independent sovereign states, nothing less."

Pakistan, Mosazai said, is constantly shifting its position. Islamabad should be "supporting the Afghan peace process in a more meaningful way and having an independent bilateral relationship that is not based on a delusional desire to control Afghanistan."

So far, Afghanistan has been unsuccessful in getting militants to negotiate peace and needs Pakistan's help. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has urged the Taliban to work out a political resolution to the war and has backed a plan for the Taliban to open an office in the Gulf state of Qatar.

Publicly, the Taliban have long refused to speak directly with Karzai or his government, which they view as a puppet of foreign powers. Afghanistan thinks Pakistan has the influence to get them to talk so it's not helpful when the two capitals are feuding.

Relations between the two countries have been hot and cold in recent years.

Afghanistan often blames Pakistan for supporting insurgents who are fighting both NATO troops and government forces. Afghan officials also claim Pakistan has had a role in major attacks and suicide bombings. They said a suicide bombing that killed a former Afghan president and leader of the government-appointed peace council in September 2011 was planned in Quetta, Pakistan.

"It is not a tempest in a teapot," said Michael O'Hanlon, a fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. "An increasing number of Afghans have figured out how much of a hand Islamabad has had in all the violence over the years.

"If there is a silver lining, it's that Islamabad needs to know that the world has figured them out and that they can't continue their double game indefinitely and get away with it. Some Pakistanis know that already. Many still need to understand it."

Relations between Islamabad and Kabul had been improving in recent months.

Karzai had lauded Pakistan's decision to work for peace and help Afghanistan reach out to the Taliban, whose leaders are thought to be based in Pakistan.

In July, when British Prime Minister David Cameron visited Kabul and met with Karzai and the Pakistani prime minister, they pledged to work together to eliminate terrorism and agreed that peace in Afghanistan would help improve security in Pakistan.

In October, Salahuddin Rabbani, the current head of the peace council and the son of the ex-Afghan president who was slain, visited Islamabad and presented Pakistan with a plan to bring peace to his country by 2015. That plan included the active participation of Pakistan.

A month later, Pakistan's foreign minister gave the Afghans a draft agreement for a strategic partnership and Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani made a visit to Kabul. That visit further bolstered Afghan hopes that Islamabad was committed to peace and good relations.

NATO, Afghanistan and Pakistan signed a deal for better military coordination on the border, and equally important, Afghan officials said Kayani not only indicated support for the Afghan peace plan, but said that it should be accelerated from 2015 to 2013.

At a February meeting in London, the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan further cemented their relationship. At the meeting, it was announced that Afghanistan and Pakistan had committed themselves to trying to achieve peace within six months.

But Afghan officials said the meeting was not as rosy at it seemed.

They said Islamabad demanded three preconditions: That Afghanistan limit its relations with India — Pakistan's archenemy; reach a domestic consensus on peace; and immediately sign a strategic partnership with Pakistan.

Instead of the preconditions, the Afghans said they were expecting Pakistan to take its own steps toward fostering peace talks, including the release of the former No. 2 Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Afghan officials hoped that Baradar and other imprisoned members of the Taliban can help bring the Taliban to the peace talks. In January, Pakistan's foreign secretary had said Islamabad would eventually release all Taliban prisoners.

"Pakistan is continuing with delaying tactics in their support of the peace process by demanding a supposed intra-Afghan consensus on the peace process at a time that a national consensus to end the violence is the strongest it has ever been for the past decade," Mosazai told the AP.

Western officials have said that the Afghan government was too optimistic about what Pakistan was ready to give, especially on the release of Baradar, and that they should show patience.

Pakistan has denied issuing preconditions, but Afghan officials say recent comments show otherwise — including some made by unnamed Pakistani foreign ministry officials that Karzai was an impediment to peace.

"We believe that relations between the two countries are deteriorating," Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said recently. "Enough is enough."

In Islamabad, the senior Pakistani official stressed that Pakistan was supporting reconciliation. As a way to kick start the peace process, the official said Pakistan has suggested a meeting attended by the Taliban and representatives from Afghanistan's multiple ethnic groups. He insisted that the meeting was not aimed at excluding Karzai from the process, but rather to make sure that the Afghan president didn't cut out his own political opposition.

Further complicating efforts to gain traction on a peace process is internal fighting among members of the Taliban, the official said. He said there was an ongoing debate between two factions of the Taliban: Those who reject talks when they are close to seeing international forces leave and a weaker Afghan force take charge and others who see reconciliation as a way to regain political power in Afghanistan.

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AP Intelligence writer Kimberly Dozier contributed from Islamabad.

Follow Patrick Quinn on Twitter at __www.twitter.com/PatrickAQuinn

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Security risks, frayed relations dog US, Afghans

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A series of security problems and fractured relations with Afghan leaders plagued Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's first trip here as Pentagon chief, including the Afghan president's accusations that the U.S. and the Taliban are working in concert to show that violence in the country will worsen if most coalition troops leave.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph Dunford, quickly rejected the charges President Hamid Karzai made Sunday as "categorically false." But the accusations were just the latest in a series of disputes that have frayed relations between the two nations as the U.S. works to wind down the war and turn the country's security over to the Afghans.

Speaking to reporters shortly after Karzai made the comments, Dunford said the Afghan leader has never expressed such views to him but said it was understandable that tensions would arise as the coalition balances the need to complete its mission with the Afghans' move to exercise more sovereignty.

"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the past 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage," said Dunford.

Dunford's comments came, however, soon after U.S. officials cancelled a news conference with Hagel and Karzai because of a security threat — just a day after a suicide bomber on a bicycle struck outside the Afghan Defense Ministry, killing nine Afghan civilians and wounding 14 others. Hagel heard the explosion from the safe location where he was meeting with Afghan officials but was never in danger.

The security problems compounded a series of flare-ups in recent weeks, including a dispute that has stalled the transfer of a U.S. prison to Afghan authority as well as Karzai's order to expel U.S. special operations forces out of Wardak province, which lies just outside the capital, because of allegations that Afghans working with the commandos were involved in abusive behavior.

Hagel met with Karzai Sunday night and said that he discussed all the key issues with the president. He also rejected any suggestions that the U.S. is in collusion with the Taliban. Speaking to reporters traveling with him, Hagel declined to detail his conversation with Karzai but said, " I think he understands where we are and where we've been, and hopefully where we're going together"

Hagel said he's known Karzai since shortly after the invasion in late 2001, adding that such extended relationships can often be beneficial, especially when dealing with complicated issues.

The U.S. and Afghan leaders are in the midst of negotiations over the long-term presence of American forces in Afghanistan beyond the end of 2014, when all combat troops are scheduled to leave.

U.S. officials would not provide details on the security concerns that led to cancelling the news conference. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But Pentagon press secretary George Little said the cancellation was not due to Karzai's earlier comments about the U.S. and the Taliban.

During a nationally televised speech, Karzai said two suicide bombings that killed 19 people on Saturday — the one outside the Afghan Defense Ministry and the other near a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province — show the insurgent group is conducting attacks to help show that international forces will still be needed to keep the peace after their current combat mission ends in 2014.

"The explosions in Kabul and Khost yesterday showed that they are at the service of America and at the service of this phrase: 2014. They are trying to frighten us into thinking that if the foreigners are not in Afghanistan, we would be facing these sorts of incidents," he said during the speech about the state of Afghan women.

Karzai is known for making incendiary comments in his public speeches. And Dunford on Sunday said that some of the recent disputes between the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan leaders "strike at the heart of sovereignty" and could be more political in nature. He said Karzai may be doing what he needs to do to communicate with the Afghan people and their political leaders outside the government.

That argument also resonated with Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska. "I was once a politician so I can understand the kind of pressures that especially leaders of countries are always under," Hagel said. "I would hope that, again, we can move forward, and I have confidence we will and deal with these issues."

Dunford also rejected the suggestion that the recent friction reflects erosion in the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan.

"We do not have a broken relationship, we do not have a lack of trust," said Dunford, adding that none of the political dust-ups have bled over into his dealings with his Afghan security force counterparts. He said efforts to train and advise the Afghan security forces have continued and that plans for them to be in the lead for security across the country later this summer are on track.

Dunford would not detail why the scheduled transfer of the Parwan Detention Center was delayed again and called it a difference in perspective. But he made clear that the U.S. believes it must retain the power to insure that detainees who are deemed to be security threats remain in custody.

Currently, there is an Afghan administrator of the prison, which is located about an hour outside the capital, but the Americans have veto power over the release of detainees. The prisoners held under American authority do not have the right to a trial because the U.S. considers them detainees held as part of an ongoing conflict.

Regarding the move to expel the special operations forces, Dunford said he spoke to Karzai about the issue on Saturday and told him the U.S. is working on a plan to transition security in the Wardak region to Afghan forces. He would not directly say whether the commandos will stay in Wardak when the deadline to leave comes on Monday. But he said Karzai knows they are working on the plan and has not yet issued a directive to the force.

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Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt and Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

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Follow Lolita C. Baldor on Twitter: http://twitter.com/lbaldor

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