WASHINGTON (AFP) — Foreign Minister David Miliband has warned Pakistan and Afghanistan that their democracies would be at risk if they did not forge a united front against terrorism.
The neighboring nations should stop blaming each other for terrorist attacks along their border and recognize their shared interests and work together, said the top British diplomat on a visit to the US capital.
"If the terrorist threat continues to be shunted back and forth across the Afghan-Pakistan border, democracy will have little chance of success," he warned at a forum of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday.
"There needs to be a common strategy to tackle the insurgency," said Miliband, whose speech was based on building democracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who grabbed power in a military coup in 1999, gave up his military role and allowed free elections in February while Afghanistan held its first elections in almost 30 years in 2005.
But the two countries have been bickering over counter terrorism efforts, largely over Kabul claims that Islamabad is not forceful enough in containing rising Taliban insurgency from the unpoliced border areas in Pakistan.
Milliband said countries needed "democratic and effective states not just democratic and credible elections."
He also appeared to back moves by the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan to reach out to militants or suspected terrorists, saying political reconciliation was critical to strengthening the two nations.
Last month, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai urged US forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban and their sympathizers, arguing that such arrests and past mistreatment were discouraging Taliban from laying down their arms.
The newly elected government of Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday signed a peace deal with pro-Taliban militants in the country's northwestern valley despite fresh calls from the United States to clamp down on Islamist rebels.
"In both Afghanistan and the FATA we need to accept that government reconciliation efforts will reach out to people that we are uncomfortable with," Milliband said.
Washington claims that the Al-Qaeda terror network was rebuilding itself in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North West Frontier Province, both on the border with Afghanistan.
"We have a right and a duty to say clearly when we think the governments of Afghanistan or Pakistan are putting our forces in the region or our citizens at home at greater risk, making deals which leave extremists free to attack us," Miliband said.
"But the process of reconciliation will be infinitely more legitimate and effective if it is locally owned," he said.
The governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan however must, with the support from allies, be able to defend their own people, "by force if they have to" against those who resisted democratic principles and the rule of law and remained committed to violence, he said.
Americans and British are among 70,000 international soldiers working alongside Afghan troops to fight Taliban and other extremists in Afghanistan.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
