CANBERRA—The international community needs to encourage Pakistan to take stronger action to tackle the insurgency on its border with Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says.
Mr Smith has just returned from a donors' conference in Afghanistan, where more than 60 nations pledged billions of dollars to help with the rebuilding of the war-torn country.
Australia pledged $250 million over three years to help with Afghanistan's national development strategy, designed to aid its ongoing battle against Taliban insurgents and widespread poverty.
On the sidelines of the conference, Mr Smith again raised concerns about the continuing difficulties controlling insurgent activity in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Not only was it a risk to coalition forces, including Australian troops, but it posed a threat to Pakistan as well, he said.
"Our troops are in the south, adjoining the border area, and we are now very worried about conditions in Pakistan on that border area," Mr Smith told ABC TV.
"I think we've got to start looking at the border between Afghanistan not just as a bilateral issue between those two nations but a regional issue in which the international community has to play a role.
"I think the Pakistan Government is only too well aware of the significant Australian and international community concern about what is occurring in that border region."
Australia has nearly 1,100 troops in the Oruzgan province in southern Afghanistan, which borders Kandahar.
Mr Smith said the violence in the border region could have far-reaching consequences for Pakistan.
"This is potentially a threat to Pakistan itself," he said.
"I think we've got to engage the Pakistan Government more on this front, both Australia and the international community, because it does present not just risks to the troops in the south but there's no doubt the Afghanistan area is the hotbed of international terrorism.
"(And) that terrorism can move very quickly to the south, to the south-east of Asia."
Many al-Qaeda and Taliban militants took refuge on the Pakistani side of the border after United States-led forces ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001.
A new Pakistani Government, led by the party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has been negotiating with ethnic Pashtun tribes to get them to press the militants to give up a campaign of violence in Pakistan in which hundreds of people have been killed over the past year.
Afghanistan and its Western allies say peace pacts in Pakistan's border regions enable militants to regroup and step up cross-border attacks from Pakistani sanctuaries.
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