Strategic partnership Agreement: Pakistan rejects Karzai’s preconditions

Accusations of Afghan president termed ‘totally misplaced’.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday strongly rejected comments by Afghan President Hamid Karzai which attached preconditions for a proposed strategic partnership pact between Islamabad and Kabul.

Last week, Karzai told a news conference in Kabul that conditions would be attached to negotiations on the strategic agreement with Pakistan.

Listing the conditions, the Afghan president said that Pakistan must stop what he calls “the export of terrorism, suicide bombers, interference and all the other things which result in killing and disturbing the Afghan people’s tranquillity and destabilising Afghanistan”.

“Once we are assured that Pakistan, with which we want to have a friendly relationship, meets these conditions – eliminates terrorism and extremism and stops the training and export of insurgency to Afghanistan – Afghanistan will be ready to work on this,” the Afghan president had said.

However, Pakistan strongly rejected these accusations terming them totally “misplaced and without any basis”.

According to an official statement, the foreign ministry spokesperson said that Pakistan would like to have a mature and responsible dialogue with Afghanistan. “However, diplomacy through media needs to be avoided,” he added in reference to President Karzai’s statement.

The spokesman stated that the proposed Strategic Partnership Agreement was suggested by President Karzai during the Trilateral Summit held recently in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2012.