Washington — The United States remains committed to Afghanistan’s peace efforts with Taliban fighters and sees the process as “the best hope” for the country and its neighbors, says Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Clinton spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul October 20, exactly one month after former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was serving as Karzai’s envoy for peace talks with Taliban rebels, was killed by a suicide bomber.
She expressed strong U.S. support for “an inclusive Afghan peace process that ends the conflict, protects the gains the Afghan people have achieved in the last 10 years, and helps bring greater stability and prosperity to the wider region.”
Both Afghan and U.S. officials are looking for a peace settlement with Taliban rebels that will include having insurgents renounce violence, end their support for the al-Qaida terrorist network, and agree to live by Afghanistan’s laws and constitution, including its legal protections for women and minority groups, she said.
“The hard-won rights of Afghans, including women and minorities, must not be rolled back, and the growth of civil society must not be quashed, and the rule of law must not be threatened,” Clinton said.
The secretary said reconciliation among Afghans is possible. “But success will take an inclusive national dialogue and sustained political effort not only from Afghans but from Afghanistan’s neighbors,” she said.
Clinton called for Pakistan to support the peace efforts, saying Islamabad is in a position to “play either a constructive or a destructive role” in getting Afghan rebels to sit at the negotiating table and achieving a settlement to end the fighting.
“We will be looking to the Pakistanis to take the lead, because the terrorists operating outside of Pakistan pose a threat to Pakistanis, as well as to Afghans and others,” she said, adding that in her talks with Pakistani officials, she would push the Pakistanis “very hard as to what they are willing and able to do” to help remove safe havens for insurgent groups that allow them to threaten Afghanistan.
“We must send a clear, unequivocal message to the government and the people of Pakistan that they must be part of the solution, and that means ridding their own country of terrorists who kill their own people and who cross the border to kill,” she said.
In an October 20 television interview in Kabul, Clinton told ABC News that 30,000 Pakistanis have died from terrorist attacks over the past 10 years, and that cooperation against terror “is an area that should be one of mutual cooperation.”
The Obama administration was encouraged when Pakistan began taking action against the Pakistani Taliban, but Clinton said there is more that Islamabad can do against insurgents.
“You can do a lot to help us in making sure that they don’t cross the border. You can help us find them when we are looking for them,” she said. Pakistan can also “cut off all connections between elements of the military or the intelligence service who provide information and give advance notice — we know for a fact — to certain elements of these terrorist groups,” Clinton said.
Pakistan can also help peace efforts by publicly and unequivocally stating that it wants the Afghan Taliban and their associates, including the Haqqani Network, to “begin negotiating toward a resolution with the Afghans themselves, and that they will, with us, stand behind that kind of negotiation,” she said.