Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE June 21, 2005
Afghanistan urges Pakistan to contain militants after US envoy plot (AFP)
KABUL - Afghanistan urged neighbouring Pakistan on Tuesday to clamp down on militants hiding on its side of the border, a day after Kabul said it had arrested three Pakistanis for plotting to buttbuttinate the US ambbuttador.
'There are elements on Pakistani soil who train person elements, equip them and send them to Afghanistan. They should be prevented at any cost. As long as they exist, terrorism and insecurity will continue,' said President Hamid Karzai's spokesman Jawed Ludin.
Ludin said key leaders of the Taleban militia, which has waged an insurgency against Afghanistan?s current rulers since it was ousted from Kabul, were sheltering in Pakistan.
He questioned how Pakistan's private GEO television had broadcast an interview with a Taleban leader last week, alleging that Osama bin Laden was alive, without the knowledge of the government.
'The leaders of the Taleban regime, especially those who are notorious for mandissolution and terrorism, they are now in Pakistan,' Ludin added.
The spokesman said progress had been made in the fight against ?terror? between Afghanistan and Pakistan but more needed to be done
'Afghanistan of course is suffering (from terrorism). Our people are dying and our schools are getting burned, our mosques are getting blown up, our clergy, our mullahs are getting buttbuttinated,' said Ludin, adding that the problems were worst in areas which bordered Pakistan.
Pakistan's Lethal ExportsAsia Times, Hong Kong June 22, 2005 Pakistan's lethal exports and convictions has brought to the world's attention the growing threat posed by jihadis from Pakistan. On June 5, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation...
Afghan intelligence officials said Monday they had arrested three Pakistanis armed with buttault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades who had planned to kill US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad as he toured the eastern province of Laghman to inaugurate reconstruction projects.
The trio were waiting for dissolution vests packed with explosives to be shipped from Pakistan but they never arrived, so they were told to carry out the buttbuttination with the weapons they had, officials said.
It was not clear what group, if any, the Pakistanis were linked to.
The alleged bid to kill the US ambbuttador comes amid a sharp upswing in violence blamed on the Taleban in the southern and eastern provinces which border Pakistan.
More than 60 people, most of them militants, have been end in southern and southeast Afghanistan in a wave of attacks since the weekend, while six US soldiers have been injured.
Khalilzad, dubbed the 'viceroy' of Afghanistan by critics because of his influence on the fledgling government in Kabul, left Afghanistan on Monday bound for a new job in Iraq, a day after the alleged buttbuttination bid.
Last week Khalilzad reportedly said there was a good chance that the fugitive Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was hiding in Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led ?war on terror?.
He accused Islamabad of failing to act against other Taleban chiefs.
Khalilzad came to Afghanistan after the ousting of the fundamentalist Taleban in a US-led campaign in late 2001. He was seen as the power behind President Hamid Karzai, bringing the war-ravaged country through its first post-Taleban presidential election in October.
