Mon June 9, 2003 08:36 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan issued a formal protest to Afghanistan Monday for dumping the bodies of 21 Taliban fighters on its territory along the border last week. Up to 40 Taliban guerrillas were killed in Afghanistan last Wednesday in what Afghan officials said was the hard-line group's most bloody defeat since it was driven from power in late 2001.
Afghan authorities later laid out 21 blood-soaked bodies in Pakistani territory along the border, to allow relatives to collect them.
Pakistan's new foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a news conference that Pakistan had sent a "demarche of protest" to Afghanistan for the incident.
"There was a clash in Afghanistan and there were several casualties, a number of bodies were thrown on our side and this was sort of desecration of those dead bodies," Khan said.
"This was received with concern and anger and our authorities conveyed their protest to the Afghan authorities."
Outgoing foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan told the same news conference that the Afghan ambassador was called to the foreign ministry and given the demarche.
The foreign ministry said six to eight bodies were claimed by Afghan relatives living in Pakistan, while the rest were taken back to the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak.
Afghan officials are convinced an increase in attacks on troops and aid workers in Afghanistan this year has been masterminded in Pakistan, and have urged Islamabad to do more to catch Taliban and al Qaeda members hiding in its territory.
Mon June 9, 2003 11:05 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai Monday blamed a suicide car bomb attack that killed four German peacekeepers in Kabul on foreign terrorists, adding that the ousted Taliban regime was finished as an organization. Addressing a news conference, Karzai pointed to the Pakistan-Afghan border as the main threat to security in Afghanistan, where attacks on peacekeepers, aid agencies and civilians have increased noticeably in recent months.
"I am not worried about the resurgence of the Taliban," Karzai said at the presidential palace in Kabul. "The Taliban movement as a movement is finished, is gone."
"Are we concerned about terroristic activities of the kind that occur at the borders or inside Afghanistan, of the kind that happened the day before yesterday? Yes."
Four German peacekeepers were killed and 31 injured on Saturday when a car exploded beside a bus taking them to the airport at the end of their assignment.
The driver of the taxi carrying the explosives has not yet been identified, but Karzai told reporters: "I guarantee the person is not from Afghanistan."
Karzai has blamed the recent wave of violence across the south of the country and in Kabul on Pakistan-based terrorists and remnants of the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime which fell from power in late 2001 after U.S. military intervention.
In southern Afghanistan, a provincial official said the Taliban was calling on the army and police to join the Islamic movement in its campaign against Karzai and U.S.-led forces.
Pamphlets have been distributed in the restive province of Zabul, part of the former heartland of the Taliban, said Mohammad Omar, deputy governor of Zabul, which borders Pakistan.
"For the past several days we have been seeing these leaflets here," Omar told Reuters by telephone from Zabul on Monday.
Omar said the pamphlets had so far failed to lure anyone from the army or police.
The United States and allies attacked Afghanistan to oust the Taliban after the regime refused to hand over members of the al Qaeda network, blamed by Washington for the September 11, 2001, air attacks.
Remnants of the Taliban and of al Qaeda are believed to be still hiding in the rugged mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border.