Afghan, Pakistani leaders to discuss spy chief attack

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will hold talks in Turkey with his Pakistani counterpart Ali Zardari on Tuesday following an assassination attempt on a spy chief which Kabul claimed was planned in Pakistan. A man claiming to be a Taliban peace envoy injured National Directorate of Security (NDS) chief Asadullah Khalid last Thursday by detonating a bomb hidden in his underwear.
Karzai did not openly blame Pakistan for the attack but said "bigger hands were involved" and that the Taliban alone would not have been able to carry out the bombing. The Pakistani foreign ministry rejected the claim and said it was ready to help investigate what it called a criminal act. Relations between the two neighbours are often tense and Kabul has accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban, accusations Islamabad has always rejected, insisting it is committed to fighting the insurgents.
Nato member Turkey will act as mediator in talks on Tuesday and Wednesday. "As a country trusted by both Afghanistan and Pakistan and with equal distance to the two sides, Turkey is acting as a catalyst to help defuse tensions between the parties concerned," a Turkish official said. The summit in Ankara will be the seventh in Turkey since a regular consultation mechanism was established in 2007 to encourage both countries to cooperate against extremism. A hotline also came into operation on Sunday to facilitate communication between the presidents of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul would also host Karzai and Zardari at a dinner later Tuesday. The two countries' intelligence officials, interior ministers and high-level military officials would hold closed-door talks on the sidelines. Khalid, known for being fiercely anti-Taliban and close to Karzai, had only been in the job for a couple of months before the attack. Another official will be representing Afghan intelligence at the Ankara meeting as Khalid is still recovering, the Turkish official said speaking on condition of anonymity.
The attack dealt a setback to efforts to find a political solution to the war in Afghanistan, which is now in its 12th year. "Terrorist organisations are trying to sabotage the process whenever things appear to be returning to normal in Afghanistan," the official said. "The latest attack is a clear indicator of this. We believe the motive behind this attack is to poison positive steps being taken in Afghanistan, which renders the talks in Ankara even more significant." Last year Kabul blamed Pakistan for the assassination of the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, Burhaneddin Rabbani, also killed by a bomber posing as a Taliban peace envoy.