[Dawn] UNITED NATIONS: Afghanistan and Pakistain traded accusations in the UN Security Council on Thursday over the whereabouts of hard boyz on their mostly non-existent border as the United Nations...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
described increased tensions between the neighbors as "unfortunate and dangerous."
Afghanistan's UN envoy, Zahir Tanin, told a council debate on the situation in Afghanistan that "terrorist sanctuaries continue to exist on Pakistain's soil and some elements continue to use terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy."
Pakistain's UN ambassador, Masood Khan, said "faceless myrmidons operate on both sides of the mostly non-existent border" and that many attacks against Pakistain were planned on Afghan soil. He said aggressive policing and border surveillance were needed.
"We must not allow faceless myrmidons to manipulate and divide the people of Afghanistan and Pakistain," Khan told the council.
He told Rooters in an interview afterward that Tanin had been "ill-advised" to raise the border issues at the Security Council as Kabul and Islamabad were already talking through other channels. Khan blamed 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...
for stoking tensions.
"When President Karzai meets our leadership he's most gracious, engaging, he's a statesman, but when he talks to the media he says things which inflame sentiment and that's most unhelpful and destabilising," Khan said. "We have given very restrained responses."
Pakistain's military played a key role in convincing Afghan Taliban leaders to hold talks with the United States, US and Pak officials said, although Afghan anger at fanfare over the opening of the Taliban's Qatar office this week has since delayed preliminary discussions.
"We were talking to multiple interlocutors behind the scenes and we have been asking them to participate in these talks, (telling them) that we think the war should come to an end," Khan told Rooters.