WARSAW: Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has yet again raised allegations against Pakistan, this time accusing the neighbouring country of maintaining a distinction between "good and bad terrorists".
During his speech on Saturday, the second day of the NATO summit held in the Polish capital Warsaw, Ghani said Afghanistan had begun to significant benefit from regional initiatives with its neighbours — with the exception of Pakistan.
"Our regional initiatives with neighbors are beginning to yield significant cooperative dividends. The exception is with Pakistan—despite clear commitments to a quadrilateral peace process, their dangerous distinction between good and bad terrorists is being maintained in practice," said the Afghan president.
"The key problem among our neighboring states is an absence of agreed rules of the game, thus we seek regional and global support in creating those rules, which will bind us to collective security and harmony," he said.
Ghani said peace was Afghanistan's highest national priority, but achieving peace "requires understanding the nature of the war imposed upon us"
"The conflict is multi-dimensional, ranging from Al-Qaeda and Daesh to terrorist groups with Central Asian, Chinese, and Russian origins, to Pakistani groups classified as terrorists by Pakistan and Afghan Taliban groups.
"Because these groups pose a threat to the region, the Islamic community and the world at large, we have devoted significant efforts to achieve cooperation regionally and within the Islamic community to defeat these groups," he said.
REUTERS ADDS:Ghani's statement came as NATO allies promised the United States that they would help fund Afghan security forces to the tune of around $1 billion annually over the next three years.
NATO, which is holding a two-day summit in the Polish capital Warsaw, has been present in Afghanistan since 2003 and has invested tens of billions of dollars in trying to stabilize the country.
A worsening security situation and a resurgent Taliban have forced the allies to reverse plans to sharply reduce their troops levels, though there is little Western appetite for a much prolonged involvement in Afghanistan.
"One of the great achievements of this meeting is that we now have in place the $1 billion in non-US commitments," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference.
He hinted there were still some pledges due to come in, adding, "We are very close (to the target) and I'm certain that we will reach that level."
The United States has been keen to secure the target of a billion dollars annually to support more than 350,000 Afghan security forces as it draws down its own military presence in the country.
US President Barack Obama announced this week that the United States was shelving its plans to cut the US force in Afghanistan nearly in half by the end of 2016, opting instead to keep 8,400 troops there till the close of his presidency next January. That still implies a 1,400-troop reduction.
There are currently about 13,000 US and international troops in Afghanistan, with Germany, Turkey and Italy as the biggest non-US contributors. Their role is to train the Afghan forces.