Afghan President slammed the timing of a US drone attack that killed a Taliban chief in Pakistan, after an angry Islamabad expressed fears the death would undermine planned peace talks.
Afghan President slammed the timing of a US drone attack that killed a Taliban chief in Pakistan, after an angry Islamabad expressed fears the death would undermine planned peace talks.
Hamid Karzai told a US Congress deleg
ation visiting Kabul that the drone strike "took place at an unsuitable time", his office said in a statement released late Sunday.
The statement said Karzai hoped the peace process, still at an embryonic stage, did not suffer as a result.
The killing Friday of Hakimullah Mehsud, the feared chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), sparked a furious response from the Pakistan government.
Islamabad was taking the first steps towards initiating talks with the militants when Mehsud was killed, prompting Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar to accuse Washington of "scuttling" peace efforts.
Karzai, who recently held talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in London, said fraught relations between Kabul and Islamabad had improved.
Sharif came to power in May partly on a pledge to hold talks to try to end the TTP's bloody insurgency that has fuelled instability in the nuclear-armed nation.
He is to hold a meeting of his cabinet security committee on Monday evening after a furious Nisar said "every aspect" of Islamabad's ties with Washington would be reviewed.
