Kerry launches Pakistan-Afghanistan meetings

By Karen DeYoung

BRUSSELS — Secretary of State John F. Kerry began talks here Wednesday with top leaders from Afghanistan and Pakistan, trying to revive lagging efforts to persuade them to work together on peace negotiations with the Taliban. The meeting came amid a new round of recriminations between the two governments, and rising nervousness on both sides of their shared border over the fast-approaching departure of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan. As he ushered Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani military chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani through the door of a secluded estate outside the Belgian capital, Kerry called “the road forward” a “crucial transformation period.” The two leaders, standing on either side of him, did not exchange glances, and their demeanors were far from warm. Obama administration officials, who have long said that a negotiated settlement with the Taliban was the only way to truly end the Afghan war, see the window closing for negotiations and the establishment of cooperative relations between the South Asia neighbors. The Taliban walked out of preliminary talks with the United States more than a year ago, charging bad faith and suspending negotiations over a possible prisoner swap in which five Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be released in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier held by the militants in Pakistan since 2009. With this year’s fighting season well underway, U.S. intelligence officials believe the militants are divided between senior, Pakistan-based leaders and ground commanders inside Afghanistan over whether to wait out the U.S. departure or to join the Afghan political process in hopes of winning influence at the ballot box next year. Afghanistan has charged Pakistan with playing a double game, publicly saying it favors talks between the Taliban and Karzai’s government, while privately keeping the Taliban leadership on a tight leash to prevent the negotiations from getting off the ground. Pakistan insists it does not control the Taliban. But it fears post-withdrawal chaos next door will undermine its security and wants to preserve its leverage with influence over the militants. The administration has tried to bring the two governments together in tripartite talks for the past several years. While there has been some progress, with an increase in cross-border trade and pledges of further cooperation, they remain mutually wary and occasionally hostile. Afghanistan has charged the Pakistani military with firing across its border in the rugged mountains, where militants operate on both sides, and alleged that Pakistan aided militants who killed 12 Afghan soldiers this month in Konar province. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan and the U.S. military with failing to go after militants of the Pakistani Taliban, a separate group it charges has sanctuaries on the Afghan side. A Pakistani agreement to host a meeting between top religious leaders from both countries remains unfulfilled. Pakistan holds a number of top Taliban leaders in detention and agreed, in earlier U.S.-sponsored talks, to release them to Afghanistan’s High Peace Council to participate in peace talks. Although some were released late last year, U.S. and Afghan officials charged they were not placed in official Afghan hands, but simply let go. Those Taliban on the top of the Afghan list remain in Pakistani custody. The border between the two countries has long been under dispute, and Afghanistan does not recognize the so-called Durand Line drawn by the British last century. This month, Karzai angrily charged encroachment when Pakistan constructed a border gate in mountainous territory that, Karzai insisted, belong to Afghanistan. Hundreds of Afghan students in the city of Jalalabad, near the frontier, demonstrated with anti-Pakistan slogans. The Obama administration is juggling its relationship with both governments. Kerry, who interacted with top Afghan and Pakistani leaders for years as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, clearly hoped his participation in Wednesday’s talks would break the ice. “We are going to have a trilateral and try to talk about how we can advance this process in the simplest, most cooperative, most cogent way, so that we wind up with both Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s interests being satisfied — but most importantly with a stable and peaceful Afghanistan,” Kerry told diplomats at a NATO meeting here Tuesday. Karzai also attended the NATO meeting, to discuss alliance withdrawal plans in 2014, and used it as an opportunity to invite the participation of Pakistan’s military leader, who maintains tight control over his country’s foreign and defense policies. Pakistan has only a transitional government at the moment, with elections scheduled for next month. Although there is no foreign minister in place, Kayani was accompanied by Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani. After the meeting at Truman Hall, the residence of the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kerry will return to Washington.