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Afghan-Pak Presidents Held Security Summit
26 January 2010
A trilateral meeting between the presidents of Pakistan, Turkey
and Afghanistan
was held in Istanbul on Monday, January
25, 2010.
Turkey,
the sole Muslim country in NATO, is using its
traditionally close ties with both countries to
mediate in the dispute.
The trilateral meeting
brought together Turkey’s Abdullah Gul,
Pakistan’s Asif
Ali Zardari and their Afghan counterpart Hamid
Karzai, which is the first of its kind since the November 2009 presidential election in Afghanistan
The 4th Trilateral Summit Monday discussed mutual cooperation to curb extremism and militancy in the
region. The leaders also hold talks
aimed at strengthening political, economic and security ties among the three
countries.
This summit came just days before a major conference in London
aimed at promoting
Afghanistan's development, at
which Karzai will unveil a plan to pay off the
insurgents.
In a joint declaration after the parleys, the three countries reiterated their determination to tackle terrorism in all its forms and importance
of enhancing indigenous capacities to that effect. |
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The joint declaration said the summit, while reiterating determination to counter terrorism, reviewed the results of the
parallel meeting the chiefs of Military and Directors of Intelligence services of their countries, emphasizing the need to
continue cooperation among the military and intelligence institutions of the three countries with a particular focus on joint
education and training activities as well as sharing best practices
and lessons learned particularly in countering terrorism.
The three presidents also underlined the importance of education as
a key area for the three countries given their young
and dynamic populations. In this behalf, they endorsed the
recommendations of the education ministers’ conference
of the three countries held earlier this month at Ankara.
The three countries agreed to “spend every effort to accelerate the qualitative development of their youth and underlined the particular
role education played in this regard”.
| The summit conference also agreed to focus on closer cooperation in
economic infrastructure particularly in the field of energy, trade and transportation at their next summit meeting. In the previous
three trilateral summits, it was decided to open up political,
economic and security fields for cooperation before education became
the latest field of enhanced ties.
The
three presidents reiterated that trans-regional development
remained a key priority of the trilateral summit process and
further stressed the importance-based approach, agreeing to
encourage participation by private in regional development programmes and undertaking joint ventures. They praised the
Istanbul
forum’s valuable contributions to diversified economic
cooperation as well as to private sector dynamism.
The meeting was attended by
Afghanistan’s neighbors’
senior officials and international organizations’ observers.
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