Britain urges NATO allies to help new Govt

BRUSSELS—British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged NATO countries Thursday to foster good relations with the new government in Pakistan and to encourage its ties with Afghanistan. “I’ll be stressing ... the importance of good relations with the new Pakistani government because it is obviously vital (to have) stability on both sides of the Afghan and Pakistan border,” he said.
“It will be important to take measures to build confidence with the new government in Pakistan and the government in Afghanistan,” he told reporters ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels. The party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was expected Thursday to nominate Pakistan’s new prime minister to lead a parliament that could decide the fate of President Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf has been a key ally in the US “war on terror”, part of which is being fought across Pakistan’s northern border with Afghanistan, where a NATO-led force has struggled to overcome a Taliban-led insurgency. The Taliban, ousted from power in Afghanistan in late 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, have been using Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt to stage attacks in Afghanistan.
A Pakistan-Afghan expert with the International Crisis Group said that many insurgent activities are being prepared in Pakistan, in cities like Quetta and Peshawar. “There is of course some command and control in Afghanistan, but you’re talking about some very powerful actors who are cross-border,” Samina Ahmed told AFP on Wednesday.
She said the April 2-4 NATO summit in Bucharest, where the alliance will lay out a comprehensive political-military plan to guide its operations in Afghanistan, would be a good time to enter into a new dialogue with Pakistan. “Bucharest gives an opportunity to raise these issues with the new government in Pakistan, which is not sympathetic to the presence of operational command centres, but necessarily is not in a position to do anything about it right now,” she said.
Miliband expressed optimism that NATO allies would find the extra troops and equipment demanded by Canada for it to keep a 2,500-strong contingent in southern Afghanistan, where the insurgency has been at its worst. “The Canadian contribution is very important,” he said before the talks, which are not expected to produce any troop pledges. “I’m confident that the nations of the coalition are going to stick together to ensure that we can all make maximum contribution in Afghanistan in an effective way.”
Canada plans to end the mandate of its troops in 2011 but has threatened to leave in a year if helicopters, drones and reinforcements do not arrive soon. Like a dozen countries represented in the south, where opium cultivation is flourishing, Canada is taking heavy casualties and this has fed public dissatisfaction at home.
Since 2002, 79 Canadian soldiers and a senior diplomat have died in roadside bombings and in melees with the insurgents. “The Canadian contribution is highly valued and so we need very much to be able to meet the circumstances that would allow Canada to continue,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday. NATO has some 43,000 troops in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) it has led since 2003, with the aim of spreading the rule of the weak central government and fostering reconstruction in the conflict-torn country.—Agencies