Musharraf's visit "a new chapter" in relations

Afghans welcomed Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's one-day visit to their capital, Kabul, on Tuesday with optimism and hope. "This is the beginning of a new chapter of a beautiful relationship," Rahin Makhdum, the interim Information and Culture Minister, told IRIN from Kabul on Wednesday. Makhdum said he hoped the two countries would enjoy good relations in the future. "We are two brotherly Muslim neighbours and we should join hands in developing a common prosperous future," he said. "Chairman [Hamid] Karzai and Musharraf mentioned many times that they want to make a fresh start, leaving the legacies of the past behind." During his first-ever visit to Afghanistan, Musharraf vowed to assist in its reconstruction and to continue cooperating with it to wipe out terrorism in the region. Pakistan and Afghanistan share over 2,000 km of common border but there have been dramatic fluctuations in their relations in the past due to border disputes, and more recently because of Pakistan's support to the former hardline Taliban regime. An Afghan analyst, Attiqullah Pazwak, told IRIN from Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar that the visit had been a much-needed response to Karzai's visit to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, in February. "If we can do away with our past's political baggage, we can prosper in other areas - particularly in the area of economics," he said, expressing the hope for the beginning of a "new era" in bilateral relations. Asked whether contentious issues such as Pakistan's backing of the Taliban or the continued incarceration of many Pakistani Taliban sympathisers in Afghan prisons would affect relations, Pazwak said the past could never be forgotten. "Nonetheless," he added, "I think the reconstruction of my country is in the best interests of the international community, particularly our neighbours." Asked for his views on Musharraf's visit to Afghanistan, the prominent writer and regional analyst Ahmed Rashid told IRIN that Pakistan needed to do more soul-searching and arrive at a more thorough understanding of the implications of its future ties with Afghanistan. However, "there is goodwill as far as the leaders are concerned", he conceded. Commenting on the next stage in bilateral relations, he cautioned that there were elements in both countries which opposed any kind of settlement. "The religious lobby in Pakistan and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan harbour deep mistrust of each other, and that affects the relationship between Islamabad and Kabul," he added. Rashid suggested that the Pakistani government should take a back seat and encourage its private sector to perform a more active role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. "Over time, the anger and the wounds will heal," he predicted. He noted, in this respect, that thousands of Afghans were going home from Pakistan every day. "I believe they are taking a message of goodwill," said Rashid.