[Dawn] Pak holy mans threatened Tuesday to boycott a peace conference in Afghanistan after a dispute over whether to invite the Taliban, another sign of how hard it will be for the two states to cooperate on a deal to end the 11-year-old Afghan war.The dispute followed talks between Pak and Afghan holy mans in Islamabad that ended Monday. The visiting Afghan delegation, which sought to play down the disagreement, was in town on a seemingly simple mission to finalise plans for a conference of religious scholars in Kabul next month meant to denounce suicide kabooms and other forms of violence in the name of Islam.
Kabul and Islamabad announced the plan for the conference in November as a sign of improving relations. But the latest talks seemed to do more to highlight longstanding disputes, especially over the Taliban.
Pakistain helped the Taliban seize control of Afghanistan in the 1990s. Afghan officials have accused Pakistain of maintaining ties to the group _ an allegation denied by Islamabad.
Many analysts agree that the Pak military continues to view the Taliban as an important counterweight to Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a
Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
's government, which is seen as too close to Pakistain's archenemy, India.
Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, head of the All Pakistain Ulema Council and also the chief of Pakistain's five-member delegation, accused the visiting Afghan holy mans of trying to use the upcoming conference to denounce the Taliban and elicit support for the Afghan government. He insisted the Taliban be invited to the event to advance the grinding of the peace processor.
"I want to make it clear that there is consensus among almost all the Islamic scholars that this conference of holy mans will be worthless if the Taliban are not invited to participate," Ashrafi told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
He accused the Afghan holy mans of being too close to the government and threatened Pak religious leaders would boycott the upcoming meeting because of differences between the two sides. Ashrafi is seen as close to Pakistain's security establishment.