Afghanistan, Pakistan pledge military cooperation at Turkey-hosted talks

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai met his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, in a trilateral meeting hosted by Turkish President Abdullah Gul at Cankaya Palace in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Military and intelligence officials will meet once a year as part of delegations led by foreign ministers, it added.

A joint declaration quoted by AFP said the representatives of the three countries agreed to continue contacts "in functional and comprehensive formats on various levels."

Gul, who chaired the summit, told a joint press conference that the participation of the respective chiefs of staff, land forces commanders and senior intelligence officials was "the most important" element of the talks, the third of their kind since 2007.Drawing on its traditionally close ties with both Afghanistan and Pakistan, Turkey is seeking to encourage and consolidate the recently improved relations between the two.

Turkey shares the view of the United States and several other western powers that peace in Afghanistan hinges on combining the battle against extremists with reconstruction and development efforts, a Turkish diplomat told AFP Tuesday.

The Turkish-sponsored talks came one day after more than 70 nations met in the Hague, Netherlands, to reinvigorate international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan’s lawless western region.

Afghanistan says much of its insurgent violence is planned in Pakistan, and, along with the United States, has accused its neighbor of not doing enough to stop militants crossing the border.

Pakistan rejects those accusations and says more than 1,500 of its troops have been killed at the hands of Islamist extremists since 2002.

Danish PM's NATO bid

Karzai Wednesday refused to comment on Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s possible nomination for NATO’s top job, saying the matter was up to alliance members.

"Afghanistan is not a member of NATO. It is the members own business," Karzai was quoted by AFP as saying when asked whether Kabul would like to see Rasmussen at the helm.

"We will welcome the decision that all the members of NATO, including Turkey, will reach,” he said, praising Denmark’s participation in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan and reconstruction efforts.

Rasmussen is a favorite to succeed NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in August, with most of the alliances big powers solidly behind him.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, however, said last week that Rasmussen would be unwelcome, on grounds of Denmark’s failure to ban a television station Ankara says is linked to the terror organization PKK and the crisis over irreverent Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005.

Erdogan said he had received calls from the leaders of Islamic countries urging Turkey to veto Rasmussen.

Rasmussen was harshly criticized among Muslims worldwide for refusing to apologize for the publication of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb in his turban by a Danish newspaper in 2005. The cartoon, which sparked riots and attacks on Danish embassies in several Muslim states, was defended by Western governments in the name of freedom of expression.

Wednesday's trilateral meeting in Ankara was the third round of fence-mending talks between the two troubled neighbors in Turkey since 2007.

Gul said he would inform Obama about the meeting when the U.S. president visits Ankara on Monday. Turkey is expected to take the rotating command of a NATO peacekeeping operation in Kabul in August. Turkey currently has about 900 noncombatant troops in Kabul.

Gul to inform Obama

Militant attacks have grown increasingly deadly the last three years, and insurgents now control wide swaths of countryside where Afghan and international forces do not have enough manpower to maintain a permanent presence.

Some 60 militants have died in battles the last three days. President Barack Obama, who is deploying an additional 21,000 U.S. forces to bolster the record 38,000 already in the country, has said the U.S. will increase its focus on the "increasingly perilous" situation in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan is stronger than those bombs," Karzai told the press conference in response to the attack which was claimed by the Taliban.

The meeting coincided with a wave of bombings in Afghanistan on Wednesday that killed at least 17 people, including four Taliban bombers. Three of the bombers disguised in army uniforms stormed a government office in Kandahar after the fourth attacker detonated a car bomb.

Bombing in Kandahar