NATO's Afghan commander in Pakistan for help

Islamabad, Oct 10: NATO's commander in Afghanistan met Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf today amid media reports suggesting the Western alliance was losing patience over Pakistani efforts to quell the Taliban insurgency.

In an interview with Pakistani television channel Geo News taped before the meeting, British General David Richards denied he would deliver evidence that Pakistani intelligence was helping the insurgents.

''That is not the reason for one moment that I've come here,'' he told Geo.

Britain's Sunday Times had reported this week that Richards would be confronting Musharraf over allegations of covert Pakistani support for the insurgents, and would provide evidence of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar's presence in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Richards said he would be seeking more help from Pakistan, but others needed to try harder too.

''Yes, we all want to do more because we still have a problem.

Lots of other people can do more as well -- the people who I'm working with in Afghanistan and the international community,'' Richards said.

As part of a drive to enhance coordination, Pakistani army officers would soon be joining NATO's headquarters in Kabul, Richards said.

Richards met Musharraf, who is also chief of army staff, in Rawalpindi, the garrison town next to Islamabad, officials said.

There was no immediate word on what was discussed.

NATO took responsibility for security in the whole of Afghanistan last week, when the United States transferred control of the eastern provinces and its troops serving there to NATO command.

Richards, who now has more than 30,000 troops under his command, had been quoted on Sunday in an interview as saying that Afghanistan was reaching a ''tipping point'' and needed more troops to speed up reconstruction and development five years after a Taliban government was toppled.

His comments corresponded to Musharraf's warning that President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul was running the risk of allowing the insurgency to develop into a ''people's war'', unless it made Afghans feel safer and better off.

Musharraf and Karzai traded barbs in Washington late last month over the Taliban insurgency. The Afghan leader insinuated Pakistan was training Taliban fighters, while Musharraf said Karzai was ignoring problems within Afghanistan.

But after their meeting with President George W Bush, they agreed a common strategy to engage Pashtun tribesmen in pro-Taliban areas, by addressing tribal elders in jirgas, or councils, to be held on both sides of the border.

This year has been the most violent since the Taliban was ousted in late 2001 for refusing to surrender al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11 attack on the United States.

An estimated 2,500 people have been killed in fighting so far this year, including more than 140 foreign troops.

REUTERS