Pakistani leader promises help for fledgling Afghan government

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The president of Pakistan came to Afghanistan for the first time Tuesday and pledged "brotherly" support for a war-ravaged neighbor. His Afghan counterpart promised to consider freeing young Pakistanis who rushed to the defense of the old Taliban regime.

"Pakistan has only one aim, to assist Afghanistan," President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan declared at a joint news conference with Hamid Karzai. "Our plan is his plan," he said of the interim Afghan prime minister.

The two men's warm, friendly public session came just months after Musharraf made a dramatic about-face and threw Pakistan's support behind the U.S.-led anti-Taliban war. For years, Pakistan had backed the Taliban.

The Afghan leader described Musharraf's visit as a day "I personally was awaiting a long, long time."

Karzai was so intent on avoiding friction that he stifled one reporter's question about a border dispute between the two countries. As the Afghan journalist spoke, Karzai cut him short with an "Ignore that," and moved on to another questioner.

In other developments:

The special U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, appealed at a donors' meeting in Geneva for "several hundred million dollars over the next two to three years" to rebuild Afghanistan's army and police. None of the $4.5 billion in Afghan aid pledged by other governments has been earmarked for the military.

A battalion of 600 men, the first to be trained for the new Afghan army, graduates Wednesday after a six-week training course given by German and British officers.

In the third such incident in recent days, a quick reaction force of U.N. peacekeepers responded to a report of unidentified gunmen firing weapons in a west Kabul district where crime has been on the rise. No one was injured and no gunmen were apprehended.

State television said police arrested Wahidullah Sabaun, a leading Afghan figure of the 1990s whose loyalties jumped between Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and rival groups. Sabaun and associates were arrested in Kabul on suspicion of plotting against the government, the report said.

Initial support for Taliban

Pakistan has long played an important role in Afghan affairs. In the 1980s, it supported the Islamic fighters that drove a Soviet occupation force from Afghanistan. By the mid-1990s, Pakistan had shifted its backing to the new Taliban movement, which took power in Kabul in 1996.

But Musharraf withdrew that support and facilitated the U.S. war against the Taliban, launched in October because the Afghan regime protected the al-Qaida network suspected in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Despite their government's official stance, thousands of young Pakistanis flocked to defend the Taliban, and many were captured at the warfront by America's Afghan allies.

At the news conference, Karzai volunteered that such "Pakistani brothers" might be freed. "We will look into the release of those boys, those young men, who have no relations to al-Qaida, or terrorism, who are simple folk, and let them come home," the Afghan leader said.

Hundreds of Pakistanis are believed held by the interim regime. Other Pakistanis are held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

American officials and Taliban sources say fugitive Taliban and al-Qaida leaders in hiding in Pakistan are plotting an attempted return to power. But Musharraf said that in their discussions he and Karzai "vowed" that "we will never allow each other's countries ever to be used against our interests."

The Pakistani leader pointed to last week's "very successful" raids in two Pakistani cities, in which he said 40 or 50 al-Qaida suspects were arrested. He said they had been turned over to the United States.

Although Musharraf said he was not "100 percent sure," American officials in Washington say the detainees include Abu Zubaydah, identified as a top al-Qaida lieutenant.

Opium trade targeted

In their meeting, Karzai and Musharraf said, they pledged to work together to combat opium poppy cultivation. They gave no details.

They also discussed trade, aid, the return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, and the resumption of Pakistani airline flights to Afghanistan.