Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday strongly expressed his
opposition to the notion of fencing border floated by Pakistan to
curb militancy.
"It is not practical to mine the border and check terrorists'
infiltration. If we want to curb terrorism and check terrorist
activities, we have to destroy their training centers and chock
their financial resources," President Karzai told newsmen at a
press conference in Kabul.
Pakistan's foreign ministry early in the week said that it
ordered its army to fence and mine parts of the border with
Afghanistan in order to curb militants' activities.
Pakistan also said that it does not need permission from
Afghanistan to implement the plan.
Islamabad announced the decision in the wake of repeated
allegation by Kabul that Pakistan had been supporting Taliban.
Pakistan rejected the claim as groundless and saying it had
already deployed more than 70,000 troops along the border with
Afghanistan to check the militants' infiltration to
Afghanistan.
President Karzai stressed mining the border would divide the
inhabitants of the both sides of the Durand Line which divides
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Drawn in 1893 by the then Great Britain Empire, the Durand Line
divides Pashtun tribes, the major ethnic group in Afghanistan.
"Mines have maimed and killed thousands of Afghans and we are
strongly against the notion and we believe it will not check
terrorism, rather it will divide the people living on the either
side of the Line," the Afghan president said.
(Xinhua News Agency December 29, 2006)
