Pakistan focuses on a regime after Taliban

10/06/2001

By Gregg Jones
The Dallas Morning News

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan has agreed on the need to form a broad-based government in Afghanistan if the ruling Taliban militia is toppled, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday after meeting with Pakistan's military ruler.

The statement by Mr. Blair as he stood alongside Gen. Pervez Musharraf sounded a note of finality to the Afghan regime's diplomatic isolation over its refusal to surrender accused terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan is the only country that still maintains diplomatic relations with the Taliban. But it has withdrawn its embassy staff from Kabul and has pledged "full support" for a U.S. anti-terrorism campaign that is currently focused on the capture of Mr. bin Laden and punishment of his Taliban hosts.

U.S. officials have named Mr. bin Laden as the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. On Friday, Gen Musharraf repeated his government's position that the United States had amassed convincing evidence "leading to an association between this terrorist act and Osama bin Laden."

As U.S. forces continued to pour into the region, the Taliban floated another offer apparently aimed at heading off the expected U.S. military strikes.

The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan said his government would put Mr. bin Laden on trial in Afghanistan if it is given convincing evidence that he was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

But the Bush administration has said it will not hold negotiations with the Taliban or provide it with the evidence already shared with U.S. allies.

The makeup of any post-Taliban government in Afghanistan is particularly worrisome for Pakistan, which shares a 1,200-mile border with Afghanistan. The dominant Afghan opposition group, the Northern Alliance, is supported by Russia, Iran and India and is antagonistic toward Pakistan, which helped the Taliban rise to power in the mid-1990s.

"We have agreed that if the current Taliban regime fails to yield up bin Laden and it falls, then its successor must be broad-based with every key ethnic group being represented, including the Pashtuns," the British prime minister said at a news conference after his meeting with Gen. Musharraf.

Pakistan also has a large ethnic Pashtun population that has strong cultural and family ties with Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun minority. The Taliban support base is rooted in the ethnic Pashtun population.

An adviser to the former king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, said Friday that the Taliban could join a coalition to chart the country's political future. This week, the former king forged a united front with the Northern Alliance. He has lived in exile since he was deposed in a 1973 coup.

Gen. Musharraf has invited the king to send a delegation to Pakistan for talks.

During his comments, Mr. Blair thanked Pakistan for its support in the terrorism campaign and stressed that any strikes against Afghanistan, a Muslim country, were not directed at the Afghan people or the Islamic world.

"The 11th of September was an outrage against the civilized values of all peoples of all faiths in the world," the British prime minister said. "This was not a crime against the West. It was a crime against humanity."

Mr. Blair arrived in Islamabad from Moscow, where he held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Later Friday, he flew to New Delhi to meet with Indian officials.

"This is part of making sure that around Afghanistan we have all the people supporting us," Mr. Blair said. "The purpose is to ensure that we have a trap set around Afghanistan in which everyone supports the things we need to do."