Washington – President Bush drew Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai together for a meal at the White House on Wednesday night and urged the two bickering war-on-terrorism allies to find ways to put aside their differences.
“Today’s dinner is a chance for us to strategize together, to talk about the need to cooperate, to make sure that people have got a hopeful future,” Bush said in brief remarks, flanked by the two leaders in the Rose Garden.
“It’s very important for the people in Pakistan and in Afghanistan to know that America respects religion, and we respect the right for people to worship the way they see fit,” he said.
Judging by the body language Bush himself had said he would be watching, there were plenty of tensions to overcome over a light dinner of soup, sea bass and salad.
Bush spoke as the Afghan and Pakistani leaders stood stiffly on either side of him.
Musharraf remained expressionless during his host’s brief remarks, while Karzai repeatedly nodded agreeably.
Karzai and Musharraf never touched, each taking Bush’s hand before turning to go inside, but not each other’s.
For months, Karzai and Musharraf have been trading barbs and criticizing each other’s efforts to fight terrorists along their long, remote, mountainous border.
Afghan officials allege that Pakistan lets Taliban militants hide out and launch attacks into Afghanistan. Musharraf says Karzai has bad information and notes that Pakistan has deployed 80,000 troops along the porous border.
Karzai says Musharraf turns a blind eye to hatred and extremism being bred at Islamic schools in Pakistan.
At one point, Musharraf said Karzai is behaving “like an ostrich,” refusing to acknowledge the truth and trying to shore up his political standing at home.
They also point fingers at one each other over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders.
Each leader says bin Laden isn’t hiding in his country and suggests the other might do more to help find him.
Musharraf wants Karzai to agree to “a verbal cease-fire” and stepped-up intelligence cooperation to fight terrorism and bring peace to both countries, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said Wednesday.
Kasuri spoke in an Associated Press interview in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations’ opening session. Kasuri pointed to a new U.N. report that he said found that most of the violence in Afghanistan is by Afghans based in the country, with help from across the border.
All this comes as Afghanistan suffers its worst reversals since the U.S.-led ouster of the extremist Taliban regime nearly five years ago.
The Taliban militants have regrouped and launched an offensive earlier this year whose strength and organization took Afghan and U.S. officials by surprise. They have adopted methods commonly used by militants in Iraq: suicide bombings, ambushes and beheadings.
Illegal opium production has risen yearly despite billions spent to suppress it, and Afghanistan is now the source of more than 90 percent of the world’s supply.
The White House clearly thinks that enough is enough.
“The president has made it clear that they’ve got a shared interest, and the shared interest is combating terrorism,” White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters. “He will remind them of the fact, and I think both men understand that.”
The United States will do what it can to resolve the differences, “but the two leaders also understand that they’ve got a shared interest in making sure that the other guy succeeds,” Snow said.
Bush’s three-way dinner party, just weeks before the November congressional elections, comes as he is working to convince voters that Republicans are best able to guide the U.S.-led war against terrorism. He faces declining American support for both the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the ongoing U.S. military commitment in Afghanistan.
