Border fighting overshadows Pakistan-Afghan talks on Taliban

FIGHTING across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border will overshadow talks when the two countries meet along with the United States today to map out plans for talks with the Taliban.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai accused Pakistan on Sunday of firing 470 rockets into eastern Afghanistan over the past three weeks in an escalation of fighting across the porous border.

Pakistan denied the allegations. It blames Afghanistan for giving safe haven to militants on its side of the border, particularly in eastern Kunar province, leaving it vulnerable to counter-attack when it chases them out of its own ethnic Pashtun tribal areas.

“I think the main thing on the agenda this time may be the situation on the border,” said Waheed Mujhda, political analyst at the Afghan Analytical and Advisory Centre in Kabul.

The talks, between US envoy Marc Grossman and top diplomats from Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be the first since President Barack Obama announced a faster-than-expected troop withdrawal last week, accompanied by talks with the Taliban.

Pakistan, badly bruised after US forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad on May 2, is keen to show it has a constructive role to play in helping the US to bring stability to Afghanistan.

It has long wanted the United States to hold talks with the Taliban to seek a political settlement to the Afghan conflict which it says is fuelling its own domestic Islamist insurgency.

The United States has come some way towards sharing that view, opening its own preliminary talks with the Taliban.