Agence France-Presse,
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and President Pervez Musharraf agreed on Tuesday to strengthen security along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to contain the Taliban insurgency.
Scheffer told a joint press conference with Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri that his two-hour meeting with Musharraf focused on measures to secure the border.
“This was an important element in my discussions with President Musharraf: that … every effort, every investment should be made to see that the porous border is adequately under surveillance and adequately under control,” Scheffer said.
The NATO chief underlined that military action alone was not the solution to Afghanistan's insurgency problems, despite the presence of 37,000 NATO forces.
“It is my strong opinion that the final answer in Afghanistan will not be a military one and cannot be a military one. The final answer in Afghanistan is called reconstruction, development and nation-building.”
Kasuri said Pakistan had made huge efforts to enhance stability in the border region.
“Pakistan has deployed twice as many troops and suffered thrice as many casualties as the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) forces in Afghanistan,” he said.
He said that Pakistan had increased the number of troops and military posts on the rugged border to check cross-border movement of militants.
“Previously we had 80,000 soldiers, but now with the movement of some more troops it's reached 90,000.”
“The onus for border control cannot be placed on Pakistan alone. We expect a matching response from Afghanistan as each side must play its due role to combat the menace of terrorism,” he added.
Scheffer, who arrived here on Monday, also met Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Aziz told the visiting official that Pakistan had started “selective fencing of our side of the border to prevent illegal movement on the border.”
Afghanistan has opposed the fencing, saying that it would divide families on both sides of the border.
Official sources said better coordination between Pakistan and Afghanistan also came under discussion during talks with Musharraf in the context of mutual mistrust between the two neighbours over cross-border infiltration.
The visit comes after Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai met in Ankara under Turkish mediation last month and said they had reached a new accord to step up efforts against terrorism.
Musharraf told the NATO chief the Taliban were primarily an Afghan problem and that Afghan and international coalition forces needed to do more at military, political and administrative levels to defeat the insurgency, the source said.
Afghanistan and Western allies believe that Pakistan's support is crucial because the Taliban and other militants linked to the Al-Qaeda network use its semi-autonomous tribal areas as a launch pad for attacks inside Afghanistan.
Afghanistan suffered its bloodiest year in 2006 with more than 4,000 people killed, mostly rebels, sometimes in pitched battles between Taliban-led insurgents and NATO-led troops in regions bordering Pakistan.
The Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan in late 2001 by US-led forces.
As well as the NATO-led ISAF troops in Afghanistan, there are also around 14,000 troops in the US-led coalition focused on counter-terrorism tasks.
