Iranian leader
Mahmoud Short RoundAhmadinejad flew into Islamabad in the afternoon for a formal summit meeting scheduled on Friday to be followed by a joint news conference, Pakistain government officials said.
Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
arrived earlier in the day for a series of talks with the government and the military on his second visit in nine months.
His office said separate talks with Pak President
Asif Ali President Ten PercentZardari
... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ...
and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ...
would focus on expanding relations, economic ties and "enhanced cooperation" on ending 10 years of war in Afghanistan.
The Mighty Pak Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani
... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI...
and senior government ministers were also present, officials said.
Karzai termed Pakistain's support as "critical to the success" of an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led grinding of the peace processor and the reconciliation.
Pakistain, the historic ally of the Taliban, says it will do anything required by Kabul to support an Afghan-led grinding of the peace processor, but there is a wide degree of skepticism in Afghanistan and the United States about its sincerity.
"Both sides agreed on the need to strengthen mutual cooperation to overcome the common challenges of terrorism and extremism and expressed their resolve to work for the stability and peace of both the countries," Gilani's office said.
Pak Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar visited Kabul this month on a fence-mending visit amid reports that Kabul and Islamabad felt isolated by contacts between the United States and the Taliban in the Gulf state of Qatar.
But in an interview published in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Karzai said the Afghan government was part of three-way peace efforts.
There has been no Taliban confirmation of talks with Karzai's government.
"There have been contacts between the U.S. government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including the Taliban," Karzai was quoted as saying.
He did not mention any Pak involvement, but said cooperation from Islamabad "would make the whole matter easier".
Pakistain says the trilateral summit will focus on cooperation on counter-terrorism and transnational organized crime including drug and human trafficking, border management and trade issues.
Islamabad is moving towards a detente in its own relations with Washington, which took a drastic turn for the worse over last year's covert American raid that killed the late Osama bin Laden
... who is now sometimes referred to as
Mister Bones...
and air strikes that killed 24 Pak soldiers.
But despite strong U.S. objections, Pakistain says it is pressing ahead with a multi-billion-dollar project to build a gas pipeline to import fuel from Iran.
"There is no change or shift regarding the gas pipeline project and it is scheduled to be completed by 2014," said the official.
Israel this week accused Iran of targeting its diplomats in Georgia, India and Thailand, against a backdrop of speculation that the Jewish state or the United States could be months from launching military strikes against Iran.
On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad unveiled new strides in Tehran's nuclear program in a defiant blow to U.S. and EU sanctions designed to rein in its atomic activities.
"I don't think so," a senior Pak government official told Agence La Belle France Presse when asked if mounting tensions between Iran and Israel, and the showdown over Iran's nuclear program, would dominate the summit.