Pakistani President Meets with Afghan Counterpart

MICHELE NORRIS, Host:

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is in Afghanistan today meeting with that country's president, Hamid Karzai. Speaking in Kabul, Musharraf said the two countries should have brotherly relations in the fight against what he called the common enemy of the Taliban and al-Qaida. He also said his country will not allow U.S.led coalition troops into tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. Yesterday Pakistan announced a peace deal with militants in a troubled province along the Afghan border.

For more on these developments we turn to Pamela Constable of The Washington Post. She attended today's meeting and Pamela, what more came out of today's meeting between Musharraf and Karzai?

PAMELA CONSTABLE: Well, I think an important aspect of the meetings, or at least the press conferences after the meetings, was the atmosphere. It was very chummy and brotherly and both Musharraf and Karzai, who have had very, very harsh words for each other in recent months, seemed to be both bending over backward to give each other a new chance and to make a break with the past for the sake of, as Musharraf said, fighting the common enemy of terrorism and the Taliban. Much remains to be seen, what's going to actually happen on the ground, but it looks as if there has been a breakthrough in the relationship between these two leaders.

NORRIS: Any idea what led to that breakthrough?

CONSTABLE: It's hard to say. I think the fact that Musharraf came here to both privately and publicly say we need to act together to work together, not just be friends. And the other thing was that he laid out in great detail what he hoped and expected to result from the agreement he's made with the Taliban base along the border in Pakistan, and he made it sound like a better agreement than had been sought.

For example, he stressed that if the Taliban reneged on the agreement not to attack troops and not to do cross-border attacks in Afghanistan that he would not hesitate to go back and use military force. So the fact that he's making these strong statements here and very positive statements about Afghanistan, about its president after the long period of very difficult and volatile relations, seems, I mean he seemed to be sincere. And I think that as a result of that the Afghans appear to be wanting to give him a chance.

NORRIS: So he says they're offering a carrot, but if they have to they're willing to use the stick. But how hard has it been for Pakistan to operate in those areas?

CONSTABLE: Well, it's always been difficult and many people think that the reason he's made this deal is because he has been unable to crush the Taliban forces there militarily. He could literally, if he really wanted to, had gone in there with, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops and wiped them out. The problem with that is that these militants are hiding in these tribal areas where there is enormous local resistance and tribal resistance to government presence, particularly armed government presence.

And so if he had gone in more forcefully with more troops to wipe them out, he, as he said today, would risk a wholesale rebellion against his government by armed tribal forces. He was simply not willing to risk doing that.

NORRIS: This agreement that was announced yesterday, how will that affect U.S. forces in the region?

CONSTABLE: It will directly affect U.S. forces in the region. For one thing, there are no U.S. forces inside Pakistan. The government of Pakistan would not allow it in any case and Musharraf reiterated that today as well.

It remains to be seen how it would affect Western forces fighting in Afghanistan. Recently there's been a bit of a shift from U.S.-led fighting forces to NATO-led fighting forces. So now the dominant military force inside Afghanistan, especially in the south where most of the fighting has occurred, is by NATO forces.

So the question is how would this affect that fight. There are many people here that worry that the truce with Pakistan will free up the Taliban to more aggressively cross the border and fight an attack more seriously and more aggressively here in inside Afghanistan, which of course would make it more difficult of the NATO troops. But we don't know if that's going to happen, and again, Musharraf stated very strongly that he would not allow it to happen.

NORRIS: Pamela Constable, thanks so much.

CONSTABLE: You're welcome.

NORRIS: Pamela Constable is a reporter for the Washington Post. She was speaking to us from Kabul. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.