PAKISTAN:Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, yesterday scaled back plans to fence and lay mines on the country's 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan to hinder the movements of insurgents
Instead, Gen Musharraf said that 170 miles of fencing would be put up along the rugged, mountainous border in the coming months. The president last year announced Pakistan would fence and lay mines along the border.
The move came in response to mounting Western concerns that Pakistan was providing a haven for Taliban insurgents fighting Nato forces in southern Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, the interior and defence ministries confirmed yesterday that Taliban forces had taken partial control of Musa Qala, a town in the country's southern Helmand province which was the subject of a controversial peace agreement last October between Nato-led troops and local elders.
Under the terms of the deal, Nato-led British troops agreed to pull out from Musa Qala under a guarantee that local elders would not allow Taliban forces to return. The deal was hailed by the UN and is currently being used as a model for other peace agreements in the region, but was attacked by critics who regarded it as a surrender by international forces.
The British Ministry of Defence said that the Taliban's movement into the Musa Qala went against the desires of local people.
"By breaking the ceasefire, the Taliban have, once again, shown their complete disregard for the wishes of the Afghan people and jeopardised the Afghan government's efforts to establish peace and stability across Afghanistan", the ministry said in a statement.
Criticism of Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban flared last year after a comparable deal between the country's government and that of the border province of North Waziristan in the north-west, often thought to be a Taliban stronghold. US officials say cross-border attacks increased markedly in the wake of the accord.
Gen Musharraf denied that top Taliban leaders were hiding in Pakistan and described as "preposterous" suggestions that the Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence, its spy agency, were helping the militants.
"Pakistan is contributing the most but we are being blamed," he told a news conference. "We cannot accept this any more." However, he admitted that some border guards had allowed insurgents to cross the border, sometimes because they were unable to stop groups that were heavily armed.
"There is no question of anyone abetting but there are people at the tactical level who turn a blind eye and that needs to be corrected," he said.
A bill passed by the US House of Representatives calls for the end of US military aid to Pakistan if it fails to stop the Taliban from operating in its territory.
That legislation, along with other concerns about Pakistan, follows a record rise in the number of suicide attacks by Islamist militants in Afghanistan last year. - (Financial Times service)