Nato commander to meet Musharraf

The commander of Nato troops in Afghanistan is to travel to Pakistan in coming days for talks with President General Pervez Musharraf over the Taliban insurgency, the Nato-led force said here on Sunday.
Britain's General David Richards, who last week became commander of foreign troops across Afghanistan, is to hold "full and frank" discussions with President Musharraf, a spokesman for the force said.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would not give a date for the visit to Islamabad for security reasons. Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said the trip was due on Monday.
ISAF also dismissed the newspaper's claim that Richards would "confront" Musharraf about the insurgency and try to persuade him to rein in his military intelligence service, alleged by some to be involved in training Taliban.
"It would be entirely inaccurate to describe the visit to Pakistan as a confrontation," Nato civilian representative Mark Laity said. "The visit is intended to work at developing co-operation between the two nations on the military side."
"Not in any sense are we telling Pakistan what to do-that would be entirely inappropriate," he added. The Sunday Times said Richards had videos and satellite pictures of Taliban training camps inside Pakistan, and had compiled the addresses of senior Taliban figures.
ISAF on Thursday took command of foreign soldiers who had been under the US-led coalition in the east of Afghanistan, extending its authority across the whole of the country. With the transfer of command, Richards became the commander of an expanded ISAF force now numbering 31,000 troops from 37 nations.
ISAF is party to regular meetings between Pakistan and Afghanistan about the insurgency, with militants widely agreed to be moving across their porous and rugged border.
Richards' trip was in the context of these tripartite meetings, the next of which is due in Afghanistan in the coming weeks although a date has not yet been fixed, ISAF said.
The British general's visit, his first as countrywide commander, would include "full and frank discussions about how co-operatively, along military lines, we can make progress," spokesman Major Luke Knittig said.
The Sunday Times cited Richards saying Musharraf had publicly acknowledged "a Taliban problem on the Pakistan side of the border". "We've got to accept that the Pakistan government is not omnipotent and it isn't easy but it has to be done and we're working very hard on it," he was quoted as saying.