Afghanistan says Pakistan has started fencing border :thumbsup:
KABUL (AFP) - Pakistan has started fencing parts of its border with Afghanistan, the Afghan defence ministry said Tuesday as the government raised objections, saying the unmarked frontier was disputed.
Pakistan officials denied they had done any fencing, but said work was set to begin.
Visiting US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher said meanwhile efforts to control the movement of militants across the rugged border should be agreed by all sides.
"According to Afghan military intelligence, they have started fencing the border in an area opposite to Barmal," defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.
Barmal is in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province. President Pervez Musharraf said in February Pakistan would fence 35 kilometres (22 miles) of its northwestern border to restrict the movement of Taliban militants.
"The Islamic government of Afghanistan strongly opposes this," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
It also denied that the erection of barbed-wire fencing on parts of the 2,500-kilometre (1,500-mile) border would do much to prevent militants trained and equipped in Pakistan from crossing over to carry out attacks.
"This won't help the war on terrorism," the ministry said. "The other reality is that the (current) border is not acceptable to both countries ... so here the question is in which country this barbed wire would be erected."
Afghan officials still refer to the border as the Durand Line, its name when it was drawn up in 1893 by British India, which once included Pakistan, to divide powerful ethnic Pashtun tribes.
"We should bear in mind that in most areas, the so-called Durand Line is not clear," the defence ministry said separately. A fence in the area would separate tribes and families living on either side, it added.
But Pakistan's foreign ministry said the border between the two countries was not in question.
"There is an international border between the two countries and there should be absolutely no doubt in anyone's mind about that," ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told AFP.
"When we say we will not allow our territory to be used for militancy in Afghanistan we are very serious," she said.
"Our decision to fence some areas on our side of the international border reflects our determination not to allow our soil to be used against Afghanistan."
Musharraf has also dismissed the Afghan concerns, saying the frontier is "very, very clear" and that "Pakistan will never, never allow any change of that border."
A Pakistan security official in Islamabad strongly denied that any fencing had taken place, but said areas were being identified and some work was about to start.
He said some areas would be fenced to "divert the people towards authorised routes and restrict the movement of miscreants."
Boucher, who was in Afghanistan for talks with officials, said he hoped to raise the issue in Pakistan this week.
"The US, NATO, Pakistan, Afghanistan need to work together to control the border area and we need to discuss these things...if various steps can be effective, whether they can be acceptable to both sides," he told reporters.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070313/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrest_070313185033