Thawing relations?: Khar drops hint about imminent end of blockade

Foreign minister says parliament’s review of US ties should be passed within a week.

ISLAMABAD: A day after talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar signalled on Thursday that Pakistan could shortly end a more than two-month blockade on Nato supplies entering Afghanistan for the coalition forces.

The border has been shut since Nato air strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26 in Mohmand Agency while a parliamentary committee is in the midst of a review of its US alliance.

Responding as to when parliament would pass the review, she said: “I’m going to hopefully ensure and push it very hard that it is no later than within a week... first half of February is probable.”

“I cannot pre-empt what the Parliament is going to decide but I would assume that should not be so much of a problem,” she said when asked if the recommendations would include re-opening the border.

When the route eventually re-opens, it is widely expected to tax Nato convoys carrying supplies shipped to its port in Karachi and trucked through its territory to landlocked Afghanistan.

Afghan peace process

The foreign minister also sought to distance Pakistan from being in any way an independent actor in an effective Afghan peace process after a leaked Nato report based on material from interrogations of more than 4,000 captured Taliban and al Qaeda operatives, accused Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of still backing the Taliban.

The foreign minister said that Pakistan was willing to do whatever Afghans wanted to end 10 years of war with the Taliban, but insisted the process should not be led by the Americans or any other foreign power.

“We’re willing to do whatever the Afghans want or expect,” Khar said when asked whether Pakistan was ready to nudge the Haqqani network towards negotiations, but stopped short of naming the group or commenting further.

Earlier, Germany’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Michael Steiner in a meeting with Khar also endorsed a Pakistani proposal for a broad-based and genuine reconciliation process in Afghanistan, including talks with the Haqqani network, a foreign ministry official said. The German envoy is a on a visit to Islamabad to help bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table.

“Germany and Pakistan have agreed on the broader contours of the Afghan reconciliation process,” said the official after talks between Khar and Steiner.

Karzai visit

Furthermore, Khar said, Karzai was due in Islamabad in the middle of the month and that she would travel with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to Qatar, where the Taliban has set up a liaison office for talks with the Americans.

She said it was “not in anyone’s interest” for Afghanistan to slide back into the chaos of the past, but said Pakistan had “so far” not played any substantial role in the contacts there between the Americans and the Taliban.

Khar was determined to refute perceptions that Islamabad was an obstacle to peace. “It is [up to] Afghanistan to decide and as a friendly neighbour, it is our job and responsibility and will to stand strongly behind that. The only prerequisite that Pakistan has is that it should be an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-driven, Afghan-backed process which has the ownership of Afghan people.”

Khar also took a swipe at media reports and leaks, saying these do not reflect Pakistan’s “dialogue” with Nato and the United States.

“Pakistan would not want to be seen to be working at cross purposes with the rest of the world, including westerners, Nato, Isaf, US. It will be in our interest to be able to assist them in whatever way we can,” she said. AFP

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2012.