Afghanistan, Pakistan must work together: Karzai

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai (right) and Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz stand together during the meeting of Afghan and Pakistan tribal leaders in Kabul.

KABUL, Aug 9 (AFP): Afghan President Hamid Karzai told hundreds of Afghan and Pakistan tribal leaders Thursday that both nations could defeat a resurgent Al-Qaeda and Taliban if they worked together.
Karzai's remarks came as he opened three days of talks on rising Islamist extremism in the absence of his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf, who abruptly pulled out of the meeting the day before.
With 700 delegates and elders on hand from tribal areas straddling the rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan -- an area said to be rife with militants -- he said the two nations shared a common destiny.
"I am confident, I believe ... if both Afghanistan and Pakistan put their hands together, we will eliminate in one day oppression against both nations," he said in his opening address at the so-called "peace jirga".
"If the problem is from the Afghanistan side, we should seek ways to solve it. If the problem is in Pakistan, we should find solutions for it," he said in Kabul, where thousands of police and soldiers were on patrol for the meeting.
"Our future and our destiny is intertwined," Karzai said.
Along with elements from al-Qaeda, the Taliban have been able to regroup since being ousted from power in Kabul by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.
Karzai and Musharraf have traded recriminations about the root of the unrest, while the Pakistani leader has been angered by US accusations that his government is not doing enough to counter the militant threat.
Musharraf is a notable absentee from the talks, having abruptly pulled out on Wednesday citing an engagement in Islamabad, ostensibly to deal with rising domestic insecurity.
Nearly 100 Pakistani delegates, from one of the tribal areas where Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists are said to be most active, also boycotted the meeting.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, the last-minute replacement for Musharraf, denounced the extremists.
"Terrorism, militancy, the violent creed preached by Al-Qaeda, extremism and Talibanisation represent pain, intolerance and backwardness in our societies and a phenomenon that has maligned our great and noble faith, Islam."
"They are not the future of Pakistan or Afghanistan. We must fight these dark forces with determination and resolve," he said.
Karzai had mooted the peace jirga, held in a massive white tent in the grounds of a college west of Kabul, in September last year, with insecurity growing in Afghanistan despite the efforts of nearly 50,000 international soldiers here to help in the fight against the Islamists.
The jirga has been billed as an opportunity for tribal leaders to thrash out a strategy to deal with the escalating terrorism threat.
Relations between the neighbours have been frosty over the Taliban, which was driven from government in 2001 after having being helped to power by Pakistan in 1996, which later joined the US "war on terror".
The Afghan president said he did not consider the Taliban-linked violence in Afghanistan to be the work of Afghans.
"This is the work of non-Afghan elements. This is the work of the enemies of Afghanistan and Islam," he said.
Karzai also used the occasion to condemn the Taliban's kidnapping of women, which he said had defamed Afghanistan.
The hardline movement has been holding 16 South Korean women, and five men, since July 19. Two male hostages have already been killed.
"It has not happened in the history of Afghanistan that we are kidnapping women," Karzai said, describing the taking of female hostages as a "historic" defamation.