Pakistani premier arrives in Afghanistan

New Afghan strategy: Obama ‘surprises’ Afghanistan ahead of Gilani’s trip

Pakistan’s top political and military leaders huddled here on Friday on the eve of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s visit to Kabul to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

A meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, a body that seldom meets, chaired by the prime minister and attended by Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Committee Lt-Gen Khalid Shamim Wynne and Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, also comes in the wake of leaked US diplomatic cables suggesting that the civilian and military leaderships had been at odds with each other on key national issues.

Gilani’s trip to Afghanistan is being given extra importance as the Obama administration is preparing to review its policy towards the region later this month and there have been reports that both Pakistan’s political and military leadership are worried about an abrupt pullout from the war-torn country.

A handout by the premier’s media office did not mention whether the meeting discussed the leaks or divulged upon other pressing issues like US President Barack Obama reviewing the Afghanistan-Pakistan policy later this month.

It did, however quote Gilani on the Afghanistan-India issue. “The conflict and strife in Afghanistan has for thirty years adversely affected Pakistan in multiple ways,” Gilani said.


US President Barack Obama praised American troops for “important progress” against Taliban militants in Afghanistan, during an unannounced visit to a US airbase outside the capital on Friday.

A planned helicopter trip to Kabul to meet President Hamid Karzai was cancelled because of bad weather and instead the two leaders spoke only briefly by telephone.

Obama’s second visit to Afghanistan as president came as the White House prepared to release a review of the war strategy and a day before Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s visit to Afghanistan.

The US president is under pressure to show progress in the increasingly unpopular nine-year-old war, and told nearly 4,000 troops gathered in a hangar to hear him that they were gaining ground against insurgents.

“Washington has invited both Pakistan and India to be engaged in the Afghan transition,” US State Department spokesman said in Washington on November 19.
“The US would engage Pakistan and India in the transition process of Afghanistan where the US intends to transfer security to Afghan forces by 2014,” he added.
Gilani’s Kabul trip confirms that Islamabad has accepted the US strategy to be engaged in the Afghan transition process, irrespective of India’s presence in Afghanistan.