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Taliban with No Terror Links to Return Home
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Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai
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By
Hussbanullah Mutawakkil, IOL Afghanistan correspondent
PESHAWAR,
May 22 (IslamOnline) – Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai expressed
his government’s wish for Taliban prisoners with no terror links to
be allowed to return to Afghanistan, insisting, though, that neither
Taliban leader Mullah Omar nor Al-Qaeda leader Ossama bin Laden
should be granted amnesty.
“We
have discussed coordination of efforts to fight terrorism with
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf,” Karzai said at a press
conference Tuesday, May 21, with Pakistani Minister of human resources
Oys Ahmed Ghani. Karzai added that he thought Bin Laden was still
hiding in Afghanistan and is still hunted down.
Karzai
promised to release all prisoners in Afghanistan, indicating that he
conferred with Afghan deputy Defense Minister Abdul-Rashid Dostum
about the fate of those prisoners.
In
answer to a question about a number of ministers in the interim
government being anti-Pakistan, Karzai said: “The Pakistani people
helped Afghans in their war against Russians and this is one thing our
people will never forget; we respect the Pakistani people.”
Commenting
on the Hindu-Pakistani relations, karzai expressed his country’s
hope that the two neighbors would reach a peaceful settlement through
dialogue and negotiations. He said that war was not the right path to
tread, adding that it brings nothing but destruction.
The
Pakistani government last week deployed 8,000 regular troops in the
tribal regions on its western border with Afghanistan, in an attempt
to stop the infiltration of any Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighters.
Government
sources said the Pakistani troops started digging trenches and
building military bases. The troops will conduct ground operations in
areas thought by the U.S. government to have Taliban or Al-Qaeda
elements. The U.S. troops will not take part in these operations, the
sources added.
For
his part, the President of the National Pashtun Party Mohammed Afzal
Khan warned about carrying any military operations in tribal areas
based on incorrect information, explaining that it will neither be in
the Pakistani government’s nor in the U.S. troops’ favor.
Meanwhile,
two Afghan newspapers quoted Mohammed Naeim Qadery, a military source,
as saying that “the U.S. authorities plan to build a military base
in the Sarbal region betwixt Herat and Islam Qal’a in western
Afghanistan, forty kilometers from the Iranian-Afghan border.”
The
idea of building the base was agreed last week between U.S. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Herat mayor Ismail Khan, the source
added.
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