[Dawn] 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...
telephoned Pakistain Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ...
on Tuesday to urge him to reconsider a boycott of the Bonn conference over a deadly NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
strike, officials in both countries said.
Karzai's deputy front man Siamak Herawi told AFP that Pakistain was an important participant in the conference aimed at bridging peace after 10 years of war against the Taliban, and expressed hope that they would ultimately attend.
"President Hamid Karzai called Prime Minister Gilani and officially asked the Pakistain government to participate in the Bonn conference," said Herawi.
"We regard Pakistain as an important country and are optimistic they will attend the Bonn conference."
Pakistain said it would skip the conference on Afghanistan after a NATO strike on Saturday killed 24 Pak soldiers on the border.
Pakistain has already closed the Afghan border to NATO convoys, a lifeline for 140,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, ordered American personnel to vacate an air base reportedly used by CIA drones and ordered a review of the alliance.
Gilani's office issued a statement confirming that Karzai had asked the prime minister to reconsider, but gave no hint of an official rethink.
Gilani said that Pakistain had been extending complete cooperation for peace and stability in Afghanistan.
"However,
there is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened...
he further added that how could a country whose own illusory sovereignty and territorial integrity was violated from Afghan soil play such a constructive role?" Earlier, Afghanistan's foreign ministry said it had not yet received an official confirmation that Pakistain would opt out of the meeting.
"Our Pak brothers should remember that Bonn is an Afghan conference, it will be chaired and led by Afghans," said foreign ministry front man Janan Mosazai.
A Pak government official earlier told AFP on condition of anonymity that the cabinet had decided not to attend the event over the crisis.