World losing Afghanistan war: Zardari
PARIS – Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari is quoted as saying the international community is losing the war against the Taliban largely because “we have lost the battle to conquer the heart and soul” of the Afghan people.
In an interview appearing in Tuesday’s Le Monde daily, Zardari said the coalition “underestimated the situation on the ground and was not conscious of the scale of the problem.”
Zardari, who is in Paris on a European tour that will take him to London later Tuesday, said military reinforcements were only a small part of the solution. He also warned there would be no quick fix to the problems in Afghanistan. “The action of the international community must be long term,” he said.
Zardari vowed Tuesday to confront head-on British Prime Minister David Cameron’s allegations of Pakistani support for terror, and warned coalition forces were losing the war in Afghanistan. Zardari hit back after Cameron last week suggested elements in Pakistan supported “the export of terror” to its neighbors Afghanistan and India.
“The war against terrorism must unite us and not oppose us,” Zardari told the French daily Le Monde, after he met French leaders ahead of a visit to Britain where he will see Cameron on Friday.
“I will explain face to face that it is my country that is paying the highest price in human life for this war,” he said, in comments quoted in French by the newspaper. Cameron, meanwhile, insisted that he did not regret his comments, saying he had given a “pretty clear and frank answer” to a straight question while visiting India last week. “I don’t regret that at all,” he told BBC radio.
But British lawmakers of Pakistani origin hit out at Zardari Tuesday, saying he should be back home sorting out the flooding disaster rather than launching his son’s career.
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