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PR. No.213/2008

Date: 15/07/2008    

RESPONSE TO AFGHAN ALLEGATIONS

Pakistan rejects the baseless allegations leveled against its intelligence agencies and armed forces by President Karzai and the Afghan Cabinet. Such baseless accusations serve no purpose other than vitiating bilateral atmosphere and creating an artificial crisis in Pak-Afghan relations. Regretfully the decision by the Afghan Cabinet to suspend important forthcoming bilateral and regional meetings on such flimsy grounds ignores the importance of economic cooperation to the improvement in the overall living conditions of the people of Afghanistan that has implications for the overall security situation as well.

In Pakistan 's view the abiding interests of Pak-Afghan relations and the need for credible partnership in the common struggle against terrorism and militancy should transcend short term political expediencies and point scoring. Pakistan hopes that Afghanistan will do some rethinking and desist from such provocative statements and initiation of blame game.

Islamabad

15 July 2008