RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Pakistan has told U.S. military leaders it is willing to help train Afghan soldiers to fight Taliban forces, the country’s army chief said Monday, a promising gesture by a government at times skeptical of Washington’s strategy.
Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in his first-ever briefing with foreign journalists, sought to counter criticisms from the West that Pakistan is a reluctant ally when it comes to battling Taliban in Afghanistan.
Stressing the importance of having a stable, secure Afghanistan on Pakistan’s western border, Kayani said his country has offered to help prepare Afghanistan’s army to assume sole responsibility for the country’s security.
“We’re talking to the U.S. and (NATO forces). We are interested in getting more involved in training of the Afghan national army,” Kayani said during a briefing inside the Pakistani army’s heavily guarded headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. “This is good for the short term and the long term.”
Pakistan has rankled Obama administration officials because of its refusal to militarily pursue Afghan Taliban who use Pakistan’s tribal regions as staging areas for attacks on Afghanistan-based U.S. and NATO forces.
After Kayani’s briefing, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told reporters that the army was still trying to determine whether Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mahsud died from injuries suffered in a Jan. 17 U.S. drone-fired missile strike in North Waziristan.
A Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Azam Tariq, denied that Mahsud had been killed and said the insurgent group soon would release a video showing that the Taliban leader was still alive.
