Pakistan must stop backing Taliban, says former Afghan intelligence chief

A former head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, Amrullah Saleh, has squarely blamed Pakistan for supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Saleh served as the NDS chief between 2004 and 2010, and categorically stated that Pakistan must stop backing the Taliban.

"Any other normal country we have normal problems but our extra normal problem is Taliban and backing of Pakistan for the Taliban and that's the subject discussed now-a-days at various levels for Pakistan stop supporting Taliban because if Pakistan stops supporting Taliban we can solve it other problems we have," said Saleh.

Amrullah said that he admired India's efforts in contributing for peace, stability and development in Afghanistan, especially health, education and other manpower training.

"The expectation in Afghanistan is that India continues it has been doing investing in education, education and lot of assistance given in building the Afghan capacity and civil service and etc," said," he added.

He was speaking to media during a trilateral conference titled "China, India, the UK and Afghanistan, a partnership for stability", in New Delhi.

Hosted by Vivekananda International Foundation, the aim of the event was to bring peace, stability and prosperity to Afghanistan.

The conference between the three nations was held in the context of "burden sharing" by regional countries as Afghanistan enters a critical phase this year.

"Regional powers have to make sure that none of the soil is used for creating instability in Afghanistan and basically that is very much important and there is cooperation required from all the countries especially from Pakistan to make sure that the Taliban are not given the type of sanctuaries that they have always given and also to help out in the process of reconciliation which of course requires the Taliban to accept the constitution in Afghanistan and also try and democratize Taliban," said Ravi Sawhney, Fellow, Vivekananda International Foundation.

As drawdown of western forces has concluded, India is putting effort to ensure that regional cooperation is one of the solutions to bring peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Indian and Chinese think-tanks agreed that the two countries can cooperate on health, education, agriculture and other such areas in Afghanistan.