KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said if the United States and Pakistan ever went to war, his country would back Islamabad, drawing a sharp rebuke Sunday from Afghan lawmakers who claimed the country’s top officials were adopting hypocritical positions.
The comments came just days after Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Islamabad must do more to crack down on militants who are using its territory as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan.
“If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan,” Karzai said in an interview with private Pakistani television station GEO that aired Saturday. “If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.”
He said that Kabul would not allow any nation, including the U.S., to dictate its policies.
Both Washington and Kabul have repeatedly said Pakistan is providing sanctuary to militant groups launching attacks in Afghanistan.
The comments set off a firestorm of criticism in the country. Afghan lawmakers argued they were particularly hypocritical coming just weeks after the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani by a suicide bomber.
While it is unclear who masterminded Rabbani’s killing, the Afghan government has said it was planned in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the Taliban leadership’s suspected base. In addition, the Afghan interior minister accused the Pakistani intelligence service of being involved — a claim that has not been substantiated.
After her stop in Kabul, Clinton flew to Pakistan to deliver a message that if Islamabad is unwilling or unable to take the fight to the al-Qaida- and Taliban-linked Haqqani network operating from its border with Afghanistan, the U.S. “would show” them how to eliminate its safe havens.
Even so, she said the U.S. has no intention of deploying U.S. forces on Pakistani soil, and that the favored approach was one of reconciliation and peace — an effort that needed Islamabad’s cooperation.
While it weighs its options, NATO pressed ahead with its operations.
The U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces on Saturday concluded two operations aimed at disrupting insurgent operations in Kabul, provinces south of the Afghan capital and along the eastern border with Pakistan — all places where the Haqqani network has launched attacks.
NATO did not release further details about the operations, but Army Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a coalition spokesman, said Sunday that “a number of Haqqani affiliated insurgents plus additional fighters have been either detained or killed in the course of operations.”
Meanwhile, bodyguards for Afghan Interior Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi shot and killed a would-be suicide bomber who was waiting for the minister’s convoy Sunday in Sayyed Khel district of Parwan province, north of Kabul, the ministry said. The minister was not in the convoy at the time.
NATO also said three of its servicemen were killed in separate clashes with insurgents in the south and east of the country. The coalition did not provide additional details, but the deaths, which occurred Saturday and Sunday, raised to 474 the number of NATO servicemen killed so far this year in Afghanistan.
Also, five villagers were killed while trying to remove a roadside mine planted by the Taliban in the western province of Herat, the provincial governor’s spokesman, Mohyaddin Noori, said Sunday.
Information for this article was contributed from Kabul by Amir Shah and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 10/24/2011