Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on
Sunday that his country was victim of terrorism coming from the border with Pakistan and vowed to fight on Pakistani soil in "self-defence", dpa reported.
Speaking to reporters in his fortified presidential palace, Karzai said three
Pakistani Taliban leaders - Baitullah Mehsud, Mullah Fazilullah, and Mullah
Omar - warned they would come to Afghanistan and fight the Afghan or
international forces.
"Our patience is running thin, thousands of people are sent to our
country, our houses are burnt, our school are burnt," Karzai said.
"Mullah Fazilullah said that we have right to go to his house and kill him
there wherever they are. Regarding Baitullah Mesud, we will go openly and we
will hit him, the Pakistani government should know we will come and hit him
there wherever he is," Karzai said angrily.
Mehsud is a Taliban leader who commands thousands fighters in South Waziristan,
the restive tribal region in north-west Pakistan. He has recently vowed to wage
Jihad (holy war) against the US and its allies in Afghanistan.
Mehsud has also been accused of having direct links in the assassination of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, along with a series of suicide attacks on
the country's security forces.
Relations between Kabul and Islamabad, the two close allies of US on war
against terror, have soured recently after the Pakistan government decided to
strike a peace deal with Pakistani Taliban, who are widely entrenched on the
border with Afghanistan.
Several Afghan officials warned the truce would enable Taliban militants to
step up their fights inside Afghanistan.
US officials also recently joined Afghanistan in its concerns over the Pakistani
truce, while NATO commanders on the ground have recently openly pointed finger
at tribal area in Pakistan as the safe haven for insurgents.
Pakistan, which supported the creation of Taliban and officially recognized
the Ultra-Islamic regime until last days before the US-led invasion toppled
their government, vehemently denies the claims and asserts that the regime has
deployed more than 100,000 troops to the rugged border to clamp down on
insurgents.
Thousands of Taliban militants, including their leader, the one- eyed Mullah
Mohammad Omar, have escaped and were given sanctuaries in Pakistani tribal
region. The militants often cross border and stage attacks in Afghan soil.
When a foreigner wanted to come to Afghanistan country and fight its forces,
Karzai rhetorically asked: "What should be our defence? Reading poems? Or
it should be something that would rescue us?"
"We will be killed here anyway, it is better that we go a step forward and
kill ourselves there so that the enemies could not come after us, it is a very
serious issue," the president said on his return from a donor conference
in France.
The Friday conference in Paris, the international community pledged more than
20 billion dollars for the reconstruction war- ravaged country and strengthening
of its fledging security forces.
"Fazilullah should know that we will hit him in his house and in his
bases, the other fellow Mullah Omar of Pakistan should know the same, this is a
two-way road in this case," Karzai said.
"We will get them and we will defeat them and we will avenge all that they
have done in Afghanistan for the past so many years," the Afghan president
said.
"We hit them yesterday," the president said, without giving any
details.
On Thursday at least 11 Pakistani troops including an officer were killed when
US-led coalition forces destroyed paramilitary Frontier Corps post at Gora Prai
in the tribal district of Mohmand Agency.
The incident happened when Afghan and coalition forces clashed with a group of
militants who were trying to cross the border. Islamabad protested the US forces for bombing, but coalition forces in Afghanistan called their action as
"self-defence".
Karzai's blunt comments come after some 900 prisoners including some 400 jailed
Taliban managed to escape following an attack by militants on a prison in
southern city of Kandahar on Friday night.
The attack was similar to the previous two assaults earlier this year, in which
Taliban militants, contrary to their typical guerrilla-style, carried out a more
sophisticated attack strategy.
In January a group of militants attacked the capital's only five- star hotel,
killing six persons, while militants attacked a military parade in Kabul in May.
Karzai and foreign diplomats attending the ceremony survived the attack, but
three people, including a lawmaker, were killed.
Following those incidents, Afghan top security chiefs said that the attack was
plotted inside the tribal areas of Pakistan.
"These two incidents in Kabul and Kandahar were very, very fortunate
incidents, indicative of the challenges that we still have indicative of the
weaknesses that we still have," Karzai admitted.
"Therefore it is all the more reason for us to work harder and to keep
building the Afghan institutions and intelligence and to be a lot more alert
and steadfast in our resolve in confronting terrorism as it affects all of
us."