ANKARA - Pakistan and Afghanistan pledged closer cooperation in the fight against al Qaeda and Taliban militants during a summit hosted by NATO member Turkey on Wednesday.
Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of not doing enough to stop militants crossing the border to carry out attacks, but ties have improved under Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, whose country is facing a growing Islamist insurgency. The Obama administration wants more regional support in Afghanistan.
Zardari and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai, after a day of high-level talks in Ankara also attended by senior military commanders and intelligence chiefs from the two countries, agreed to boost military and political ties to tackle violence.
A statement issued after the meeting said foreign ministers and military and intelligence chiefs from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey will meet once a year to expand cooperation.
"We can collectively work together for stability and security in the region," Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, told a university audience later Wednesday.
"Our political leadership, our ministers and our army chiefs met and evaluated today our security situation. I don't think this nature of meetings have taken place anywhere at any time."
Muslim Turkey, which will host U.S. President Barack Obama next week, has long-standing ties with Afghanistan and Pakistan and hosted two high level meetings between them before Wednesday's talks.
A close ally of the United States, Turkey hopes it can play a key role in Obama's plan to bring Afghanistan and Pakistan to work together in tackling insurgents. A Turkish diplomat told Reuters Wednesday's meeting was a good way of "ironing out any wrinkles in the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan."
Obama has unveiled a new strategy which will combine extra troops, funds for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a renewed focus on targeting al Qaeda militants on the Afghan/Pakistan border.
More than 70,000 U.S. and NATO troops are in Afghanistan battling a growing insurgency by the Taliban movement, which is also spreading its influence in Pakistan through the porous mountain border between the two countries.
World officials met in The Hague Tuesday for a U.N.-backed conference on Afghanistan at which Washington appealed for international support to defeat militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In a reminder of the violence plaguing Afghanistan, which has reached its bloodiest level since the Taliban's removal in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, a group of suicide bombers raided a provincial council building in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar Wednesday and killed 11 people.
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