Camp David, Md. – President Bush said Monday that the U.S. and Pakistan, if armed with good intelligence, can track and kill al-Qaeda leaders. He stopped short of saying whether he would ask the Pakistani president before dispatching U.S. troops into that nation.
While Bush hails Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf as a trusted ally against terrorism, Pakistan has objected to the U.S. taking any unilateral action within its borders.
Bush also said he thinks Iran is playing a destabilizing role in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have staged a comeback.
“I would be very cautious about whether or not the Iranian influence in Afghanistan is a positive force,” Bush said at Camp David after a two-day meeting with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.
Though Karzai says Iran is playing a helpful role in his country, he admits security has deteriorated there during the past two years.
In Islamabad on Monday, Pakistan’s foreign minister spokesman Tasnim Aslam said there are no al-Qaeda or Taliban safe havens in its territory.
Karzai said strides had been made in reducing infant mortality, battling corruption and stemming the cultivation of poppies used in making heroin. Karzai also said the Taliban, who profit from the drug crop, are killing innocents but are not a threat to the government, which has only spotty control outside Kabul.
Today, a purported spokesman for the Taliban said the group will keep kidnapping foreigners in Afghanistan, as Karzai and Bush ruled out making any concessions for the release of 21 South Korean hostages.
Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the hostages’ lives rest in the hands of the two leaders.
The Taliban have demanded the release of 23 militant prisoners held by Afghanistan and at the U.S. base at Bagram, but the Afghan government has all but ruled out that option.
At Camp David, Karzai and Bush agreed that “there should be no quid pro quo” that could embolden the Taliban, said Gordon Johndroe, a Bush spokesman.
Ahmadi said the government’s refusal to negotiate would not stop the Taliban from seizing more foreigners.
Twenty-three South Koreans from a church group were kidnapped by the Taliban on July 19. Two men in the group have been killed. Among the remaining 21 hostages, 16 are women.
In a telephone interview with Voice of America, a woman identified as one of the hostages said all the captives were ill – two of them seriously – and “cannot eat and sleep well.”
The woman, who was speaking under the control of her captors, said the hostages were being kept in groups of four.
“We are all innocent people. We came here to help these people but now we are all sick.”
A spokesman for the families said they had little faith the Camp David summit would end the crisis.
