Author: Anne Barnard, Globe Staff
Publication: The Boston Globe
Date: November 23, 2001
URL: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/327/nation/US_Pakistan_in_rift_over_fighters_fate+.shtml
Islamabad, Pakistan - Tensions heightened
yesterday between the United States and Pakistan as the countries disagreed
over the fate of Pakistani pro-Taliban fighters who are trapped in the
embattled Afghan city of Kunduz. The new dispute came as the Pakistani
government severed diplomatic ties with the Taliban regime - at the request
of the United States - and closed its embassy here.
Pakistani officials said yesterday
that any Pakistani man who had gone to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan,
and who is captured there, should be sent back to Pakistan to face legal
charges. But a spokesman for the US-led coalition instead called on the
Northern Alliance, which Pakistan distrusts, to take charge of detaining
and disarming non-Afghan prisoners and deciding what to do with them.
Spokesman Kenton Keith told reporters
in Islamabad that although the US-led coalition would respect any Northern
Alliance deal that gives Afghan Taliban fighters safe passage out of Kunduz,
for non-Afghan forces ''safe passage back to the countries from which they
have come is not something we would like to see.''
Keith said they should be ''detained
and disarmed while their future is being sorted out and negotiated,'' and
that they should be registered with international monitors such as the
International Committee of the Red Cross.
Pakistani and US officials stopped
short of saying they disagreed on the issue. But the differing emphasis
underscored a growing worry - prominent in recent days in the Pakistani
press - that the United States is slackening its attention to Pakistan's
interests now that the military action for which its support was crucial
may be winding down.
''That we are collaborating with
the Americans does not mean Pakistan and its people should be taken for
a ride,'' Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmad wrote in an opinion column published yesterday
in the Pakistan Observer. It called on Pakistan to protect its citizens
in Afghanistan.
Pakistani journalists yesterday
peppered government spokesmen with questions, citing what they said were
examples of how Pakistan was being pushed around: the US ambassador to
India recently labeled Kashmiri militants terrorist, though Pakistan calls
them freedom fighters; the United States plans to search Pakistani ships
for escaping militants; the Taliban embassy closed the day after the United
States asked for its closure publicly.
Foreign ministry spokesman Aziz
Ahmad Khan defended Pakistan's relationship with Washington. For one thing,
he said, the ships' searches do not violate Pakistani sovereignty. Asked
whether the UN is ''washing its hands'' of the situation in Afghanistan
by refusing to accept prisoners, he said the UN simply doesn't have the
resources to do so. And, on the issue of the embassy, Khan said the final
decision was Pakistan's.
Whatever the impetus for the closing,
it came yesterday with little fanfare. The embassy - a low-slung, out-of-the-way
building that in the early days of US-led campaign was the scene of nearly
daily news conferences by the Taliban's bespectacled ambassador - was locked,
and last night the Taliban flag was taken down.
Khan said Pakistan's decision to
shut the embassy had been made a day earlier and ''communicated officially
to the Afghans this morning.'' Earlier, Pakistan had closed Taliban embassies
in Karachi, Quetta, and Peshawar.
The United States was clearly pleased
with yesteraday's closing. ''We are delighted to know that Pakistan is
severing diplomatic relations with the Taliban,'' said Keith.
Taliban officials offered no immediate
comment.
Meanwhile, as Northern Alliance
troops closed in on the Taliban's last northern stronghold yesterday, Pakistani
officials publicly and privately expressed fears of a massacre like the
ones that occurred when the Northern Alliance took over cities in the early
1990s. Pakistani officials urged members of the US-led coalition and the
United Nations to take a more active role to ensure the safety of the 2,000
to 10,000 foreign fighters - many of them Pakistani - believed to be in
Kunduz.
Pakistan has also had ''secret contacts''
with the Northern Alliance over the issue, according to an official in
the Foreign Ministry who asked to remain anonymous.
President General Pervez Musharraf
raised the issue with the ICRC president in a meeting yesterday.
''The president expressed deep concern
over the safety of Afghan and non-Afghan Taliban in Kunduz,'' said Khan.
''The president emphasized that the coalition, the UN, and the ICRC must
do everything to ensure that these people are treated in accordance with
international law and do not become victims of revenge.''
The top spokesman of Pakistan's
military government, Major General Rashid Qureshi, said distinctions should
be made between Pakistanis who recently crossed out of religious zeal and
suspected members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The former could be
prosecuted just for leaving the country without proper documents, he said;
the latter could face more serious charges.
''I do have a sense that people
are worried that if they are Pakistanis, we are going to shelter them.
Not at all,'' Qureshi said in a brief interview. ''We are not going to
differentiate, to say, `If they are Pakistanis they are innocent, but if
they are Arabs, they are responsible.' No, we will be absolutely fair.''
Several thousand foreign troops
are believed to be among the Taliban forces holed up in Kunduz, among them
some of the regime's most feared fighters. They are the focus of much international
attention, because of their suspected links to Al Qaeda.
There are reports they have vowed
to fight to the death, even killing Afghan Taliban who have tried to surrender.
But if they surrender to the Northern Alliance, there will be new concerns
about whether they will find ways to slip home to their countries before
being questioned - or, conversely, face summary executions by Afghans who
blame them for bringing trouble to their land.
This story ran on page A1 of the
Boston Globe on 11/23/2001.
