Karzai warns Pakistan of external intervention over failure to give up radicalism

Islamabad, Feb 18 (ANI): Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has warned Pakistan that the region would remain prone to external intervention if it failed to rein in radical elements.

"If we don't want NATO to leave our region then continue with instability and radicalism," he said and suggested that the only way forward for insulating the bilateral relationship from 'accident proneness' was an unreserved cooperation against the radicals, especially on both sides of the Durand Line.

"First we must have an advanced state of relationship, which means peace and stability in Afghanistan; joint struggle against radicalism and its spread; and smoother relationship in which possibility of accidents or incidents that can throw our relationship into spin is removed," The Dawn quoted him, as saying.

Karzai's blunt demand to Pakistan for bringing Taliban leaders to the negotiating table has shocked the political and military leadership in Islamabad, keeping both countries poles apart in terms of reconciliation with the Taliban even after two days of high-level talks.

"Deliver Mullah Omar? If that is the expectation, then there's no reality check then. Then they're not only unrealistic, but preposterous," these were the words of Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar over Karzai's demands.

Khar's words on Friday summed up how a trip hailed by Karzai as the most important in the past decade concluded without any solution. (ANI)