Afghanistan Says It May Halt Effort to Seek Peace Via Pakistan

Afghanistan’s government says it has made no progress in working with Pakistan to start a peace process in the Afghan war, and may suspend the effort.

Instead of trying to negotiate with Taliban groups based in Pakistan, Afghanistan may work more closely with the U.S., Europe and India, President Hamid Karzai said in a statement issued by his office. The comments followed a meeting of top government officials to review policy after the assassination of the country’s leading peace envoy by a Taliban bomber who officials say was sent from Pakistan.

The Karzai government’s expression of frustration with Pakistan follows statements by U.S. defense officials who say the Pakistani military is backing Taliban fighters in a “proxy war” in Afghanistan. By suggesting closer cooperation with Pakistan’s old rival, India, the Afghan statement is likely to further sharpen tensions and rhetoric between Pakistan and the U.S.-led allies in Afghanistan.

“Karzai is joining Washington in upping the ante against Pakistan, but what result it will produce is questionable,” said Amin Saikal, an Afghan political scientist who directs the Islamic studies center at the Australian National University. Pakistan can influence the Taliban’s conduct of the war and could shift it “via the Haqqani network and other proxies, toward more urban guerrilla warfare, especially in Kabul,” Saikal said by phone.

The Afghan statement said Karzai met with government and security officials to assess Afghan policy after a suicide bomber killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the government’s High Peace Council, on Sept. 20.

Sending Investigators

‘‘In spite of three years of negotiations and efforts to make peace and good relations with Pakistan, the Pakistani government has not taken any steps to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries or prevent Taliban military training and armament on its soil,’’ the government said in its statement.

Karzai told Kabul-based Noor TV that he will send investigators to Pakistan to seek the killers of Rabbani. The envoy’s colleagues on the peace council and Afghanistan’s intelligence service say the suicide bomber came from the area of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province in southwestern Pakistan where Taliban leaders fled after being overthrown by U.S.-led forces in 2001.

The toughened talk from Karzai’s government was echoed yesterday from Pakistan, where dozens of political parties met and rejected as ‘‘without substance and derogatory” assertions this month by the retiring top U.S. military commander, Admiral Mike Mullen, that the Jalaluddin Haqqani faction of the Taliban “acts as a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate in attacking U.S. and Afghan government forces.