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US President George W. Bush met on Tuesday with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai at the White House. Prior to that discussion, Bush also had talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. To people's surprise, the three leaders are due to meet again on Wednesday night, which are generally believed to be focusing on the worsening situation in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan tension ignored

In the past years, a sequence of bloody conflicts and terror attacks in Iraq and scandals involving ill-treatment of prisoners and captured Islamic militants have become a major coverage of mass media, whereas the situation in Afghanistan, which appeared to be calm relatively, seemed to have been ignored sometime.

However, war always claims lives and make great troubles. So is the five-year-old war in Afghanistan. Facing the fact that Taliban is gaining influence in southern Afghanistan and more than100 NATO peacekeeping soldiers have been killed in the war-torn country this year, the US military has given up the plan of troop reductions there.

"Our troop level in Afghanistan will remain about steady through ... February," Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, who leads the Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan, said last week.

There are approximately 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan, the highest number since the US-led invasion in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban regime.

The latest decision by the Pentagon is based upon an estimation that Taliban fighters and extremists have grown more numerous, organized and determined in some parts of the south and southeast where foreign troops are limited and the Afghan government was weak.

"In some areas there are more Taliban extremists than there were at this point last year. And within some areas they ... demonstrated better command-and-control and they're fighting harder," Eikenberry said.

Bin Laden's whereabouts disputed

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who has a US$25 million government bounty on his head, is the Western world's most wanted terror mastermind. However, despite of long and sustained effort to hunt and eliminate leaders of al-Qaida and the Taliban regime, whereabouts of the targeted people remain unknown to the US intelligence personnel.

Karzai said on Sunday that bin Laden "probably" was in Pakistan. But Pakistani officials usually say bin Laden is more likely to be in Afghanistan. In comparison, the US government officials are reluctant to talk about the issue publicly.

However, Bush told CNN a week ago that if he had firm intelligence, he would not hesitate to issue an order to go after Osama bin Laden even in Pakistan.

Asked in an interview with CNN whether he would issue an order to go into Pakistan to kill or capture bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, Bush replied: "Absolutely."

Bush's remarks has not only demonstrated his doubtfulness about Pakistan's ability to strike against terrorists, but also apparently hurt self-respect of the government and people of Pakistan who vow to defend national sovereignty in anti-terrorism war, analysts said.

Cooperation plus differences

Following his meetings with Musharraf and Karzai, Bush has denied that Afghan-Pakistan tensions are undermining efforts to quell cross-border violence or hunt down terrorists.

"Quite the contrary. We're working as hard as ever in doing that," Bush told reporters after meeting with Karzai on Tuesday.

"It's in President Karzai's interest to see bin Laden brought to justice. It is in President Musharraf's interests to see bin Laden brought to justice. Our interests coincide," Bush insisted.

Bush may be right in making assessment of determination by leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan in fight against terrorism. But differences between Kabul and Islamabad over a recent peace deal between Pakistan's government and tribal chiefs in a remote Afghan-Pakistan border region is unavoidably making discount to Bush's optimistic saying.

"We will have to wait and see if that is going to be implemented exactly the way it is signed," Karzai said, showing skepticism about the deal.

On Sept. 5, Musharraf announced the peace pact with domestic tribal chiefs, saying the peace deal was designed to end armed attacks inside Pakistan and to stop the Taliban forces operating in the tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border crossing.

While Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan are at odds over the Taliban issue, Musharraf's remarks which disclosed that Washington threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the "Stone Age" if it failed to join the "war on terror" in 2001.

Although Bush claimed to be "taken aback" by the report, he failed to confirm or deny the report, which has resulted in many questions about Washington-Islamabad anti-terrorism cooperation.

It is generally believed that both Afghanistan and Pakistan are key forces in the US-led war against terrorism. Starting from this viewpoint, the Bush administration will be expected to make every effort to keep not only its alliance with both Karzai and Musharraf as long as possible, but also to keep cooperation between Kabul and Islamabad as close as they can.

(Xinhua News Agency September 28, 2006)