U.S. envoy in Pakistan on quest for Afghan stability

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the State Department in Washington January 22, 2009.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke arrived in Islamabad on Monday on his first visit to the region to draw up a strategy to stabilize Afghanistan and eradicate Islamist militancy.

More than seven years after a U.S.-led invasion ousted the ruling Taliban, peace in Afghanistan appears as elusive as ever and al Qaeda militants based on the Afghan-Pakistan border still pose a grave danger to the United States and its allies.

Holbrooke, a former ambassador to the United Nations who negotiated the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war, is due to meet Pakistani leaders on Tuesday.

He will later visit Afghanistan and India.

"We hope that our discussions would give him the perspective which we have, from Islamabad, on issues facing Afghanistan, Pakistan and our region as a whole," said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit.

Inexperienced in South Asia, the veteran diplomat with a reputation as a tough negotiator is arriving in the region at a time of flux.

Elections are due in India by early May, and in Afghanistan in August, while relations between Islamabad and New Delhi are tense following an attack by Pakistani militants on the Indian city of Mumbai two months ago that killed 179 people.

With Afghanistan in the grip of the worst violence since the Taliban was toppled from power in late 2001, the U.S. military has drawn up plans that would almost double the number of U.S. troops there to about 60,000.

But Vice President Joe Biden told a security summit in Munich on Saturday that "no strategy ... can succeed without Pakistan." Holbrooke told the same conference that bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan would be much tougher than in Iraq.

BORDER SANCTUARIES

Persuading Pakistan to do more to eliminate militant sanctuaries in its fiercely independent ethnic Pashtun tribal lands bordering Afghanistan will be crucial.

The Pakistani military has suffered heavy casualties fighting a guerrilla war in those areas over the past few years, and insecurity has increased. Militancy has spread across the northwest and bombs in cities have become common.

Regardless of the internal threat, there are lingering doubts, particularly in Afghanistan, India and among Western critics, about Pakistan's commitment to fighting the Taliban.

Pakistan had backed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and only abandoned support for the militia under U.S. pressure in 2001. Some analysts believe the Pakistani military still regards the Taliban as long-term "assets."

Pakistan is deeply suspicious of growing Indian influence in Afghanistan and fears encirclement.

Some analysts have argued that ending decades of hostility between India and Pakistan by resolving their core dispute over the Kashmir region would allow Pakistan to turn its full attention to the militants on the Afghan border.

But India is dead set against any outside interference in Muslim-majority Kashmir, where Muslim militants have been battling Indian forces since 1989 with Pakistani help.

Holbrooke's mandate was carefully drawn to avoid any suggestion that he would mediate between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir.

Nevertheless, Pakistan will argue that Kashmir is key.

"The Kashmir dispute has to be resolved fairly and peacefully," said Basit. "Unless it is resolved, you can't really have viable stability in South Asia."

Britain on Monday appointed its ambassador to Afghanistan, Sherard Cowper-Coles, as a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, following the U.S. approach in dealing with the two countries.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)