‘Terrorist safe havens inside Pak territory remain threat to the whole world’: Afghanistan

KABUL - More pressure should be exerted on insurgents sheltering in safe havens inside Pakistan territory because they threaten security not only in the region, but all across the globe, the Afghan Defence Department has said.

At a press conference, Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman Gen. Zaher Azimi told reporters that Washington brings pressure on Islamabad because of the existence of terrorist safe havens and sanctuaries on Pakistan’s soil.

He said that it would be difficult to bring security in the region and throughout the world unless terrorist havens located outside Afghanistan were targeted.

“Fueling and training sources of insurgency should be targeted outside Afghanistan otherwise this will remain a threat not only to Afghanistan, but to the whole world,” The Nation quoted Azimi, as saying.

He also remarked that despite modern equipment being provided to Afghan forces, which have also increased in number, the nation’s air forces still face “a lot of problems”.

“Our forces are fully equipped with modern arms, but we have a lot of problems in the air forces,” said Azimi.

According to the figures provided by the MoD, the number of Afghan army soldiers stands at 150,000 currently, and there are efforts on the ground to speed up the process of army recruitments.

In an interview to NBC News, US Vice President Joe Biden had said that all the US troops would be pulled out of Afghanistan without any conditions by 2014.

However, the Afghan Defence department said that the year 2014 marks the end of security transition process to the Afghan leadership, and not the end to the presence of foreign forces in the country. (ANI)