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US will brook no interference in Afghanistan: Khalilzad

Aziz Haniffa in Washington D C

The Bush Administration's point man for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has warned the US will brook no interference in Afghanistan by Islamabad, despite the rise of some pro-Taliban Islamic parties in the country's new parliament following the recent election.

Although not mentioning India, Iran or Russia by name, Khalilzad also warned Afghanistan's other neighbours not to compete for influence in Afghanistan by backing or arming one faction or another and to only contribute in terms of supporting the devastated country's reconstruction and economy.

Last month, Ahmed Rashid, noted author and journalist and authority on the Taliban had told a Washington symposium that India was continuing military support to the Northern Alliance both to "hedge its bets" in Afghanistan and also "to stick it to Pakistan".

Khalilzad, delivering a lecture on Afghanistan and spelling out a code of conduct for that country's neighbours at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said he was in Pakistan recently "and spoke to the leadership there".

"While Pakistan has the right to choose their own government, we recognise some of the people who are coming to the fore and what their relationships are and what their ties to the past are."

"But in terms of interfering in Afghanistan," he said, "going back to the old habits, I was assured that it would not happen. We will hold people accountable to these commitments."

"We hope there will be increased cooperation against what remains of Al Qaida and Taliban leaders and those who are in Pakistan ought to be arrested and turned over to the authorities in Afghanistan," he said.

Khalilzad said he couldn't predict how the Islamic alliance parties would react to the strong US warning, but reiterated, "I can tell you I have given them a strong message and we will now have to wait and see what they do. But certainly interference in Afghanistan and going back to the old ways will not be tolerated by us and the international community and we will be watching."

Khalilzad is special assistant to the president and senior director for Near East, Southwest Asian and North African affairs in the National Security Council and also special presidential envoy for Afghanistan.

"The United States, for its part, is committed to doing what it can, for as long as is necessary to consolidate this new order in Afghanistan and to promote regional stability and cooperation.

"We will not disengage. We will stay as long as needed to make sure we don't go back to what happened after our previous disengagement. We have learned what disengagement in Afghanistan produced and we are not going to make that mistake again."

The Afghan-born Khalilzad said, "There is no doubt we could have done better in my view after the Soviet withdrawal but we have learnt from earlier mistakes to make sure Afghanistan doesn't become what it became."

But he kept coming back to what White House and other administration officials say is a rising concern in Washington: that New Delhi, Teheran and Moscow have now once again begun to back their own favorite factions to hedge their bets and position themselves for greater influence in Afghanistan.

"Instead of competing for influence they should support the economy of Afghanistan," he said. He warned, "Our efforts will fail if Afghanistan's regional partners compete and vie for influence and go back to the bad old days of the last decade."

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