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Wednesday June 13, 9:28 AMAfghanistan to Ensure Security for Peace Jirga With PakistanKABUL, June 13 Asia Pulse - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the creation of a Centre of Coordination and Operation (CCO) to ensure peaceful holding of a much-awaited grand peace jirga between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the first week of August.The president has directed all state security organs to set up the CCO for the purpose of security of the inaugural session of the peace jirga, Karzai's spokesman Karim Rahim told a news conference here on Tuesday. Officials are under instruction from the president to launch work on the centre immediately so as to put in place the requisite security arrangements for the forum featuring hundreds of politicians, tribal elders and intellectuals. Rahimi said the CCO would forge close coordination with senior officials of the National Intelligence Directorate, Defence and Interior Ministries on foolproof safety measures for the jirga. Brisk preparations for the event were underway, he added. With regard to Sunday's abortive assassination attempt on Karzai in Andar district of the central Ghazni province, the spokesman said the militants, who wanted to disrupt the public meeting, failed to succeed in their nefarious designs. The president knew full well security conditions in the district. His visit to Andar was not an accidental event; it was a planned trip, observed the spokesman. Answering a question, he restated the governments stance on the reinstatement of Foreign Minister Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta by Afghanistan's Supreme Court. The presidential spokesman made clear Spanta would continue in his office. But Wolesi Jirga, which voted him out on May 12 over a crisis resulting from mass evictions of Afghan refugees from Iran, insists Spanta has since ceased to be foreign minister. The spokesman went on to acknowledge inflows of weapons to insurgents and drug smugglers from abroad. A full-scale inquiry was being conducted to ascertain the manufacture of the arms and the sources of their smuggling into Afghanistan, he said. At a joint news conference with President Hamid Karzai here on May 4, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said: "There have been indications over the past few months that weapons are flowing from Iran into Afghanistan." But the Pentagon chief hastened to explain there was no concrete proof of the Iranian government's support for arms supplies to guerillas. We don't have information if the government of Iran is behind it or whether it's smuggling. Exactly who was behind the flow of arms to the militants remained unclear, added the visiting defence secretary, who conferred on this and other issues with President Karzai earlier in the day. He continued they were cautiously looking into the complex problem, which - if confirmed - will lend a whole new dimension to the rising insurgency. In late April, top security officials claimed seizing six Iranian-made bombs in the western Herat province, bordering the Islamic Republic. Maj-Gen. Kiramuddin Yawar, border police chief for the western zone, said the explosive devices were captured in the Ghorian district of the relatively calm region. (Pajhwok Afghan News) |
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