Turkey to host Afghanistan-Pakistan summit
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, center, his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai, left and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari join hands at the end of a news conference in Istanbul, Turkey. – AP (File Photo)
ANKARA: The presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan will hold talks in Turkey on Tuesday and Wednesday in a bid to resolve a row after Kabul claimed an attack against its spy chief was planned in Pakistan, an official said.
The assassination attempt on National Directorate of Security (NDS) chief Asadullah Khalid was carried out Thursday by an attacker who claimed to be a Taliban peace envoy but had a bomb hidden in his underwear.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai did not directly blame Pakistan for the attack but said the Taliban alone would not have been able to carry out the bombing and that “bigger hands were involved”.
The Pakistani foreign ministry rejected the claim and said it was ready to help investigate what it called a criminal act.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari and Karzai will discuss “means of strengthening bilateral cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially at the security level,” a high-ranking Turkish diplomat told AFP Sunday.
The summit in Ankara will be the sixth in Turkey, a Nato member, since the regular consultation mechanism was established in 2007 to encourage both countries to cooperate against extremism.
It is about time that Pakistan and Afghanistan discuss the issue of terrorism honestly instead of blaming each other for the problems facing both the countries. Will they be able to do anything about it, I seriously doubt it as they both have no absolute control over their own intelligence agencies.
Shoaib
USA
Both leaders of Afghanistan & Pakistan are totally incompetent and continuously resort to blame game every time things go wrong in their respective countries, yet they do not have the power to stop Talibans on both side from carrying out such attacks. Shame on these ‘grown-up kids’.
Pakistan is sandwiched between India and Afghanistan and is the route cause of troubles in those countries.Turkey can only bring two heads together but the solution of the omnipresent problems for India and Afghanistan seems impossible for Pakistan.
Two discredited men, being brought together by a legitimate one.
what is wrong to sit down together decide own problem,all others have own or somebody’s interest to watch rather then two parties who matters,when we will take stock of own wrong doings