India has critical role in resolving Afghan crisis: Holbrooke

London, Mar 22 (PTI) India is a "great power" and has a
critical role in resolving the Afghanistan crisis, Richard
Holbrooke, the US special representative to Afghanistan and
Pakistan, has said.

Speaking at the Brussels Forum Saturday, Holbrooke said
India is "not part of the problem the way Pakistan is but
they're certainly a major factor in resolving" the situation
in Afghanistan.

The Brussels Forum is an annual high-level meeting of the
most influential political, corporate, and intellectual
leaders worldwide to address pressing challenges facing both
sides of the Atlantic.

Holbrooke said, "India, of course, is the great power of
the region, the great emerging in an international context and
its views, its role are a critical factor. And so we consult
India closely every step of the way and on my first trip to
the region I went to India."

He added: "The actual people who pose a direct threat to
the countries represented in this room, the people who planned
9/11, who killed Benazir Bhutto, who committed the atrocities
in Mumbai, who were terrorising Swat, who probably were
associated with the attack on the cricket team in Lahore, who
are associated with daily outrages -- they are not in
Afghanistan. They're in Pakistan. In the western so-called
tribal areas, although it also extends down into Baluchistan."

"You can't succeed in Afghanistan if you don't solve the
problem of western Pakistan," the US envoy said.

The starting point for the Barack Obama administration's
approach to the region is to treat it as an integrated whole,
a single theatre of war, with very different rules on each
side of the border, he said.

Holbrooke said, "We must recognise that the heart of the
threat to the United States, to the European Union, to
Australia, to many other countries in the world including
India and, I stress, including Pakistan itself, comes from
western -- the people in western Pakistan.

"When they take over Swat, they are less than 100 miles
from the capital, Islamabad, and every Pakistani and many
Indians I know in the educated classes goes -- used to go to
Swat for vacations."

Participating in the discussions, influential Pakistani
journalist Ahmed Rashid said: "You have the reluctance of the
military to take on the Taliban -- Pakistani Taliban, on its
soil. There's still an obsession with dealing with India.
Eighty per cent of the army is deployed against India rather
than against the threat that ambassador Holbrooke spoke
about."

Participants at the forum include heads of states, senior
officials from the European Union institutions and member
states, US officials, Congressional representatives,
parliamentarians, think tank leaders, academics, corporate
executives, and media.

The Brussels Forum is organised by the German Marshall
Fund of the United States (GMF), the Federal Authorities of
Belgium and the Egmont Institute, the Government of the Czech
Republic, and Daimler.

Additional sponsors include the Ministry of Defence
Republic of Latvia, the Bertelsmann Stiftung, The Tipping
Point Foundation, and Fortis Bank. PTI PS
RAI
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