WASHINGTON: The withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan is not desirable, says Pakistan’s new ambassador as the United States prepares to begin the pullout.

“Even the talk of US pullout has started having its impact. Pakistan has started to receive more Afghan refugees than before,” said Ambassador Jalil Abbas Jilani. “This shows that the people of Afghanistan too have fears.”

The United States plans to withdraw most of its combat troops from Afghanistan by Dec 2014. Although it intends to leave behind a smaller force to help the Afghan government, Kabul’s continued refusal to sign a required security agreement can jeopardise this plan too.

Talking to Dawn on his first day in office, Mr Jilani said his first priority would be to strengthen trade and economic ties with the world’s economic superpower.

“Defence and security ties obviously are equally important but cooperation in the energy sector would be the main task that one has to carry forward,” he said.

Mr Jilani, who has served in India too, urged New Delhi to take advantage of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s genuine interest in improving relations with the neighbour. “They will lose a big opportunity if they do not,” he said.

The prime minister’s visit to Washington in October, he said, also gave him “a degree of advantage” in his new assignment by “setting the tone for a very positive engagement between the two countries”.

The “positive vibes we got from all sides” during the visit and after “give us a good hope that we will be able to maintain this trajectory in relations,” said Mr Jilani.

The ambassador agreed with the suggestion that 2014 would be crucial for determining America’s role in South Asia but said that it’s still early to speculate how the situation would shape up.

“In case the bulk of the troops withdraw, the major responsibility would lie on our shoulders. Security responsibilities, previously being shared by others, then exclusively become Pakistan’s responsibility. It is certainly going to be a big challenge,” he said.

The expected withdrawal of US troops would require Pakistan and the United States to coordinate very closely for peace and stability in Afghanistan, said Mr Jilani while noting that “there are more convergences now than was the case in the past”.

The decision to leave some US troops in Afghanistan or withdraw all would depend on the United States and Afghanistan signing a bilateral security arrangement, because BSA was also a congressional requirement, he said.

Commenting on a recent US intelligence report which predicted that the Taliban would regain their influence if Nato forces withdrew, Mr Jilani said the Taliban were an important factor in Afghanistan and so far all efforts to bring about reconciliation between the Taliban and others produced no results.

“From our assessment, they will continue to play a very important role and that’s why Pakistan feels that this process of reconciliation is key to stability in Afghanistan,” he said.

Reconciliations between the Taliban and the Afghan government and among all other factions in Afghanistan were both extremely important, he said.

The holding of fair and free elections in 2014 would also play a crucial role in bringing stability to Afghanistan, said the Pakistani envoy while noting that for first time the Afghans were going to elect somebody of their choice.

Reconciliation and dialogue with Taliban has always been a consistent policy of Pakistan, which was “misread and misinterpreted”, said Mr Jilani who was his country’s secretary for foreign affairs before coming to Washington. “But now the world has come around to accepting Pakistan’s point of view.”

Hailing the Doha process as a positive development, Mr Jilani noted that those Taliban leaders who went to Doha were still there, indicating their continued interest in the dialogue process.

Mr Jilani rejected the claim by some US lawmakers that while verbally Pakistan supported the US peace plan for Afghanistan, secretly it backed the militants.

“We did everything possible to play a very positive role, deployment of troops on the Afghan border and our efforts towards various initiatives were all deeply appreciated by the core group,” which includes Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States, he said.

“My effort would be to develop better understanding, particularly at the level of the US Congress. This (criticism) shows that there are certainly a lot of misperceptions about what Pakistan is and has done. It will require more interaction with Congress.”

While Pakistan was trying to curb militancy in the tribal belt, “we feel that some responsibilities lie on Nato and Isaf forces as well,” Mr Jilani said.

“The militants have to travel 20 kilometres to cross into Afghanistan and 300 kilometres to reach Kabul. Now whose responsibility it is to control those 300 kilometres?” he asked. “We don’t have a military presence inside Afghanistan.”

Mr Jilani noted that in the last two years, cooperation among US, Pakistan and Afghan forces had increased to a great extent and military to military and intelligence to intelligence cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan had also improved.

The ambassador rejected the suggestion that Pakistan was against giving India a role in Afghanistan.

“Pakistan will not object to any legitimate mandate that is pursued by any country, but when they go beyond their legitimate mandate, we will have very serious concerns,” he said.

“We have no problem if India plays a stabilising role, but to destabilise Pakistan by using Afghan territory that will be a major concern.”

Asked if he believed India was involved in stirring trouble in Balochistan, Mr Jilani said: “India is certainly not playing a very positive role, they are definitely involved.”

Asked if he agreed with the US intelligence assessment that by 2017 the central government in Afghanistan may become irrelevant, the Pakistani ambassador said that would also depend on how the international community stayed engaged with Kabul.

He also urged all neighbouring states to observe complete non-interference in Afghanistan if they wanted to give that country a chance to stabilise.