ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has rejected allegations by a former Canadian minister on the cross-border movement of Taliban fighters, terming it “unwarranted” and “misleading.”
Chris Alexander, who was minister of citizenship and immigration from July 2013 to November 2015, in a tweet claimed that Taliban fighters were waiting to cross into Afghanistan from Pakistan.
“Anyone still denying that Pakistan is engaged in an act of aggression against Afghanistan is complicit in proxy war and war crimes,” said Alexander, who also served as Canada’s first residential ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005.
Taliban fighters waiting to cross the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan: anyone still denying that Pakistan is engaged in an ‘act of aggression’ against Afghanistan is complicit in proxy war & war crimes.#SanctionPakistan #EndProxyWar pic.twitter.com/2Nas7VhQBI
— Chris Alexander (@calxandr) August 1, 2021
The Foreign Office late on Sunday termed Alexander’s assertion “a complete lack of understanding of the issue as well as ignorance of facts on the ground.”
“We strongly condemn the unwarranted comments by former Canadian Minister Chris Alexander making unfounded and misleading assertions about Pakistan’s role in the Afghan peace process,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said in a series of tweets.
We strongly condemn the unwarranted comments by former Canadian Minister Chris Alexander, making unfounded & misleading assertions about 🇵🇰’s role in #AfghanPeaceProcess. Such remarks betray a complete lack of understanding of the issue as well as ignorance of facts on ground.1/3
— Spokesperson 🇵🇰 MoFA (@ForeignOfficePk) August 1, 2021
“Now when the world has acknowledged what Pakistan and [Prime Minister] Imran Khan have consistently maintained about there being no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, and the need for an inclusive, broad-based and comprehensive political settlement, such gratuitous commentary is deplorable,” he went on to say.
The matter, Chaudhri added, has been taken up with the Canadian side.
“We have urged the Canadian authorities to take steps to address this motivated and malicious smear campaign,” he maintained.
The Taliban have launched a sweeping onslaught across Afghanistan following the final phase of the US pullout from the war-torn country, with the district after district falling to the militia.
Kabul accuses Islamabad of patronising the Taliban. Pakistan denies the charge and accuses Washington of “messing it up” in Afghanistan through its hasty pullout.
In December 2018, Pakistan arranged rare direct talks between Washington and the Taliban, paving the way for the Doha peace deal between the two sides.
Pakistan also facilitated the landmark first round of direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban in Islamabad in July 2015.
