That is a very impressive start. But yes, I want more. I want them to keep their frickin' hands out of Kashmir!
That is a very impressive start. But yes, I want more. I want them to keep their frickin' hands out of Kashmir!
And mean while.......
CHAMAN, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistan strongly protested the killing by Afghan troops of 16 men who Islamabad says were its nationals, further inflaming tensions between the allies in the US "war on terror".
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Afghanistan said the victims were Taliban militants who crossed the frontier from Pakistan, but Islamabad maintains they were Pakistani tribesmen who were on their way to celebrate the Afghan New Year.
Tuesday's incident, for which both sides offered conflicting accounts, came amid an ongoing dispute between the two countries over security along their rugged border.
"The Afghan ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office here today and we have lodged a strong protest with him," Pakistani foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told AFP, adding that it had demanded an investigation and the punishment of those responsible.
Aslam said the victims were civilian Pakistanis who were arrested in Kabul at an unknown time and then handcuffed, tied up and brought to the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak in Kandahar province before being killed nearby.
The Afghan soldiers killed the Pakistani civilians in a "fake encounter", Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao was earlier quoted by private ARYONE television as saying.
"They were the residents of Chaman and had gone to Afghanistan for Naurouz (Afghan New Year) celebrations," Sherpao said.
Thousands of angry tribesmen watched over by paramilitary soldiers gathered in Chaman, which is just over the border from Spin Boldak, for the funerals of eight of the dead. Three others were buried in the southwestern city Quetta.
In Kabul, Afghanistan's foreign ministry said authorities had launched an investigation and that it was "premature" to discuss the issue until the probe was completed.
"The Pakistan ambassador in Kabul came to the foreign ministry and asserted that some of the citizens of their country who were killed in Spin Boldak were not Taliban but were civilians," ministry spokesman Naveed Ahmad Noez said.
Kandahar governor Assadullah Khalid said the victims were "all Afghan criminals who were living in Pakistan".
Afghan border commander Abdul Razaq said on Wednesday that the victims -- who he said numbered 17 -- were suspected Taliban militants who crossed over from Pakistan and that they included two of the militia's commanders.
But a government official in Pakistan's Chaman, Saqib Aziz, accused Razaq of ordering the men's killings "because he had a personal enmity with them".
The protest highlights the security problems facing both countries on the rugged frontier, where Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants are said to hide.
Kabul says Taliban rebels based in Pakistan's restive border areas carry out suicide bombings and other attacks in its territory, but Islamabad says it has around 80,000 troops along the frontier to stop any infiltration.
Ties between the two countries hit a low point earlier this month when Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf accused his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai of being oblivious to events in his own country.
Pakistan lodged a protest with the United States in January after around 18 civilians from another tribal area were killed in a CIA missile raid targeting Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060323/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanafghanistanattackstaliban;_ylt=AnBBWygfFbDtO0LQNvSjP_gBxg8F;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--