KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan has given neighboring Pakistan confessionsand other proof showing that the militants who carried out a recent seriesof attacks were trained in Pakistan and that Taliban leaders there areallowed to roam freely, Afghan officials said Thursday.
Interior Minister Wais Ahmed Barmak told a news conference the evidence waspresented at a meeting a day earlier in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.Afghanistan’s spy chief, Masoom Stanekzai, also attended the meeting, alongwith senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials.
Stanekzai, addressing the same news conference, said Afghanistan laid outits proof and asked Pakistan to take action to prevent further attacks.There was no immediate comment from Pakistan, which has expressedcondolences over the recent attacks. A Pakistani delegation is due in Kabulon Saturday, said Stanekzai.
Nearly 200 people have been killed over the past month in attacks claimedby the Taliban and a rival Islamic State affiliate. Afghan authorities saythey detained one of the gunmen who attacked a military academy on Monday,killing 11 people in an assault claimed by IS.
“The Taliban, with these actions, cannot call themselves a politicalorganization,” Stanekzai said. “They are a terrorist organization.”
“We expect action, not just talk,” he added.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have long accused each other of failing to combatmilitants operating along their porous border. The United States has alsoaccused Pakistan of harboring militants, and suspended military aid lastmonth.
The Afghan officials said some of the latest evidence came from confessionsby captured militants. They said they told the Pakistani side that some ofthe militants had been trained at Islamic seminaries in the Pakistaniborder town of Chaman.
Earlier in the week, Afghanistan’s U.N. envoy Mahmoud Saikal tweeted thatthe father of one of the insurgents involved in the bloody Jan. 20 assaulton Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel “conceded his son was trained in Chaman”by Pakistan’s InterServices Intelligence.
“We have all options on the table to secure the national interests ofAfghanistan,” Stanekzai said, without elaborating. – Agencies