ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has told the United States it wants a central role in resolving the Afghan war and has offered to mediate with Taliban factions who use its territory and have long served as its allies, American and Pakistani officials said.
The offer, aimed at preserving Pakistan?s influence in Afghanistan once the Americans leave, could both help and hurt American interests as Washington debates reconciling with the Taliban.
Pakistan?s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, made clear Pakistan?s willingness to mediate at a meeting late last month at NATO headquarters with top American military officials, a senior American military official familiar with the meeting said.
It is a departure from Pakistan?s previous reluctance to approach the Taliban. The meeting included the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen; the head of Central Command, Gen. David H. Petraeus; and the commander of American and allied troops in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the official said.
?The Pakistanis want to be part of discussions that could involve reconciliation,? the official said.
Pakistan?s desire to work with the United States in an Afghanistan endgame is likely to be discussed when the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, visits Islamabad, this week. So far, the United States has been more eager to push Pakistan to fight Taliban than to negotiate with them, and has not endorsed Pakistan?s new approach.
The Pakistani offer makes clear that any stable solution to the war will have to take into account Afghanistan?s neighbors, in a region where Pakistan, India, China, Iran and others all jostle for power.
Pakistani officials familiar with General Kayani?s thinking said that even as the United States adds troops to Afghanistan, he has determined that the Americans are looking for a fast exit. The impression, they said, was reinforced by President Obama?s scant mention of the war in his State of the Union address.
What the Pakistanis can offer is their influence over the Taliban network of Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani, whose forces American commanders say are the most lethal battling American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.
From their stronghold in Pakistan?s tribal area of North Waziristan, the Haqqanis exert sway over large parts of southern Afghanistan and have staged major terrorist attacks in Kabul, American officials say.
They are close allies of Al Qaeda. But they also have long ties to Pakistan?s military and intelligence agencies that have protected them inside Pakistani territory.
In return for trying to rein in the Haqqanis, Pakistan will be looking for a friendly Afghanistan and for ways to stem the growing Indian presence there, Pakistani and American officials said.
In briefings last week with reporters at his army headquarters, the usually reticent General Kayani repeated his offer at NATO to play a constructive role, while making it clear Pakistan was seeking broad influence in southern Afghanistan. The Haqqani network would be one of Pakistan?s strongest levers to do that.
American officials said Washington was still debating the contours of any negotiated solution. But a baseline for Pakistan, they said, would be for it to engineer a separation between the Haqqani network and the Qaeda leadership.
For the moment, the United States has been looking instead for military help from Pakistan to tamp down Taliban and Qaeda strength in southern Afghanistan, where the Haqqanis command an estimated 4,000 fighters, American military officials say.
The Americans have been pushing General Kayani to launch an offensive against the Haqqanis? base in North Waziristan.
At the Jan. 26 NATO meeting with General Kayani, American military commanders reviewed the list of hardware ? MI-17 helicopters, ammunition for Cobra attack helicopters, body armor, armored vehicles ? that has been put on a fast track to the Pakistani military as an inducement to take on the Haqqanis.
But General Kayani, who pleased the Americans with an operation against the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan last fall, was unmoved. ?There is no need at this point to start a steamroller operation in North Waziristan,? he told reporters last week.
Last month he took General McChrystal on a helicopter tour over the mountains of the Swat Valley, where Pakistani paratroopers landed last summer to flush out Taliban insurgents.
The message was that the Pakistani Army still regarded India as its primary enemy and was stretched too thin to open a new front.
