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Afghanistan backs Clinton warning on Pakistan
Warsaw (AFP) April 23, 2009 Afghanistan on Thursday said it welcomed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assertion that the Pakistan government was ceding more and more territory to Islamic extremists. "Afghanistan highly welcomes this position of Secretary Clinton to recognise the source of the threat in our region," Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said Thursday in Warsaw after talks with his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski. "We Afghans are the main victims of international terrorism, we try to convey the reality of our region to the world," Spanta told reporters. "On many occasion we try to encourage our allies to recognise the main training centre and protector of terrorists is grouped beyond Afghanistan's borders," he said. "Without frank and honourable cooperation from the Pakistan side to succeed against terrorism, this is an illusion," Afghanistan's diplomatic chief said. Clinton said Wednesday that Taliban advances pose "an existential threat" to Pakistan and urged Pakistanis worldwide to oppose a government policy yielding to them. Pakistani officials said Wednesday that Taliban militants in Pakistan's Swat valley have moved closer to Islamabad in a bid to broaden their control despite a deal designed to allow sharia law to end extremist violence. Sikorski meanwhile urged NATO allies participating in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan to beef up their contingents in order to speed Afghanistan's stabilisation. "If other NATO and coalition countries do what we have done which is to increase forced by a quarter...without caveat, then the Afghan authorities and the nato commanders will have the tools to do the job," Sikorski said. This month Polish President Lech Kaczynski approved the deployment of an extra 400 troops to Afghanistan, boosting the number of Poles with the NATO-led force there to 2,000. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan until 2001 when the US led an invasion in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. The Taliban had been playing host to bin Laden. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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