KABUL, Aug 26: Islamabad and Kabul need to find a common approach to tackling the Taliban-led insurgency, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said on Saturday as troops from his country set up in Afghanistan.
Around 1,400 Dutch troops are moving into the border province of Uruzgan, where “the situation is linked to people coming from Pakistan,” Balkenende said at a media briefing.
He stressed after talks with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul that the fight against terrorism, including the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies, was an international responsibility.
But he said: “It has to do with the contacts between the president of Afghanistan and the president of Pakistan. They need a common approach.”
If this did not happen, “then we have a serious problem”, he said.
Balkenende said his country believed “diplomacy, defence and development” were key to ending the violence, which has shown no signs of abating in Afghanistan despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops.
His country is one of the major contributors to Afghanistan since the Taliban — which sheltered the Al Qaeda terror network — were driven out by a US-led coalition in late 2001.
It has sent more than 35 million dollars to Kabul and will have around 1,400 troops and aircraft in Uruzgan where it will head a provincial reconstruction team, officials said on Saturday.
Karzai said his country, a battleground in the US-led “war on terror”, was “ready to sacrifice till terrorism is defeated from this region and the world.”
But it became a “nest for terrorism” after the Soviet invaders left in 1989 and world powers allowed Afghanistan to be “handed over ... to its neighbours,” he said, warning the country should not be deserted like this again.—AFP
