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Pakistan has said it will fence and mine parts of its frontier with Afghanistan, amid allegations of militant infiltration across the border.
“(The) Pakistan army has been tasked to work out modalities of selectively fencing and mining the border,” Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan told a news conference Tuesday.
“These measures will supplement the measures which are already enforced to prevent militant activity from Pakistan inside Afghanistan,” Khan said.
He said fencing and mining would be “one of the measures which will help prevent militants from crossing into Afghanistan”.
The move follows repeated accusations from Afghanistan that Pakistan is helping the Taliban.
Afghanistan said it opposed the move.
“Rather than beating about the bush, we must confront terrorists in a real manner,” Khaliq Ahmad, a presidential spokesman, told AFP.
Pakistan will also closely monitor designated crossing points, Khan said.
“There will be designated crossing points, which will be monitored closely,” he said.
It will be the first time Pakistan has mined its 2,400 kilometer (1,491 miles) porous border with Afghanistan.
The rugged border belt is inhabited by deeply conservative and fiercely independent ethnic Pashtuns, who have blood relations on both sides of the frontier.
Islamabad had proposed a similar move earlier, but the Afghan government opposed the idea.
“We don't need any agreement from any country to fence or to do whatever measures we need to take on our side of the border,” Khan declared.
The decision comes as the surge in violence in Afghanistan this year triggered a row between the two allies in the US-led “war on terror”, with Kabul accusing Islamabad of trying to destabilise Afghanistan.
Some 4,000 people, including 1,000 civilians, have died this year in insurgent violence, making 2006 Afghanistan's bloodiest year since the fall of the Taliban five years ago.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai this month for the first time publicly accused the Pakistani government of supporting Taliban insurgents, saying elements in Islamabad wanted to turn Afghans into “slaves”.
He accused Pakistani military intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in particular of helping the Islamist militia.
Pakistan firmly denies helping the Taliban and points to the fact that it has 80,000 troops along the border with Afghanistan, hundreds of whom have died fighting pro-Taliban militants.
Khan said Pakistan also maintained more than 700 check posts along the Afghan border.
“Of course the responsibility for interdicting or preventing any such militancy is not just the responsibility of Pakistan side, but is equally the responsibility of the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), NATO and the Afghan forces,” he said.
Pakistan has also decided to strictly monitor the Afghan refugee camps.
“We also request the international community especially the United Nations to expedite the refugees' return to Afghanistan and to relocate some of the camps which are closer to the border,” he said.
The movement of refugees from these camps was a subject of contention between the two countries, he added.
