Days after Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Moeed Yousuf was cited by British media as a warning that a failure to interact with the Taliban would cause an equivalent mistakes that resulted within the 9/11 attacks, his office has described the connotation as fabricated.
Mark my words…If the mistakes of the nineties are made again and Afghanistan is abandoned, the result are going to be absolutely an equivalent – a security vacuum filled by undesirable elements who will threaten everyone, Pakistan and therefore the West,” Yusuf was quoted as saying by the days on Saturday.
The report, titled “Work with the Taliban or repeat the horror of the 1990s, West told”, came against the backdrop of support from sections of Pakistan’s political leadership for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Pakistan is among the only a few countries that have kept their missions in Kabul open and are spearheading efforts to create consensus among regional countries for a Taliban-led set-up.
“We told the West again and again this was an unwinnable war… If that they had listened to Pakistan they might not be during this situation,” Yusuf was quoted as saying by the days . The report said Yusuf is at the “forefront of a PR offensive by Imran Khan’s government to urge the planet to interact with the Taliban and begin working with them”.
The report added that Pakistan was warning other countries that the failure to figure with the Taliban will end in them facing a “massive humanitarian crisis” and also “drive the new Taliban regime into more extreme behaviour and permit in foreign terrorists”.
Yusuf said engagement with the Taliban is “the only way”, adding this could be “engagement today, not fortnight or three weeks from now”. this may “ensure the Taliban remain moderate and therefore the incentive for that’s legitimacy and assistance which only the West can provide,” he said.
He defended the Taliban by saying there have been “good” signals like general amnesty announced by the group. He said the “political reality” was that the Taliban were in “control of 95% of the country” and also rejected criticism that Pakistani backing had helped the militant group.
A statement issued by Yusuf’s office said the connotation within the report was “fabricated and totally wrongly attributed” to the NSA. It said the report within the Times was a “gross mischaracterisation” of Yusuf’s conversation with the newspaper’s reporter.
“At no point did [Yusuf] state that the West should ‘immediately recognise’ the Taliban, because the article states. Nor was there any ‘warning’ of a second 9/11 linked to formal ‘recognition’ of the Taliban. this is often a highly inflammatory mischaracterisation of his remarks, one that smacks of unprofessional journalism,” the statement said.
“To reiterate, absolutely no threat was either intended or made, nor does the NSA subscribe such inflammatory rhetoric. The NSA clearly stated that the planet had acknowledged that abandoning Afghanistan and Pakistan within the 1990s was an error and presented his view that lessons from the past must be learned,” it added.
0
0
