- PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN - The Pakistani President, Gen Pervez Musharraf,
and the Afghan interim leader, Mr Hamid Karzai, agreed yesterday that their
two countries should develop "mutual brotherly relations" and
co-operate "in all spheres of activity" - including a proposed
gas pipeline from Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan.
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- "We have agreed unanimously ...
on working together to develop strong brotherly co-operation, brotherly
relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan in all spheres of activity,"
Gen Musharraf said after their talks.
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- Gen Musharraf said Pakistan will provide
$10 million to the Afghan interim government to pay for government outlays.
About 200,000 employees of the Afghan government have not been paid a salary
for over six months by the ousted Taliban, and the interim Afghan government
has maintained that paying them was the most urgent government priority.
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- Mr Karzai, who arrived in Islamabad earlier
yesterday for a one-day visit, said he and Gen Musharraf discussed the
proposed Central Asian gas pipeline project "and agreed that it was
in the interest of both countries". Pakistan and several multinational
companies, including the California-based Unocal Corp and Bridas S.A. of
Argentina, have been toying with the idea of constructing a 1,600-km pipeline
from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to growing natural gas markets in
Pakistan and, potentially, India. But the project has failed to materialise
because of the civil war in Afghanistan and the reluctance of the financial
institutions to finance it.
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- Gen Musharraf said he told Mr Karzai
that Pakistan and Afghanistan are bound together by common geography, faith,
history and culture.
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- "Pakistan is extremely interested
in having a peaceful, stable, united, progressive Afghanistan as its brotherly
neighbour because it does not only serve the purpose of peace in the region
but it also serves the economic interest of this entire region," he
said.
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- Mr Karzai said he and Gen Musharraf "look
forward to a tremendously good future. That future can be made certain
by respecting each other's territorial integrity and freedom," he
said, adding that he was grateful to Gen Musharraf "for wishing the
Afghan people the unity, the independence, the progress that Afghans so
badly need."
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- The two leaders also discussed the repatriation
of over two million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan since the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Mr Karzai thanked Pakistan for having
given "a tremendous welcome" to Afghan refugees. "But they
have a home to go to, and that home is Afghanistan.
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- "We would be grateful if our brothers
in Pakistan allowed us time to prepare for that, so that our refugees can
return home in tranquillity and dignity," he said.
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- Meanwhile police hunting a former English
public schoolboy suspected of kidnapping an American reporter have recovered
e-mails from another suspect's computer.
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- Investigators had hoped to rescue Wall
Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl before Gen Musharraf left last night
for talks with President Bush in Washington.
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- http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2
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