The pieces of this puzzle are beginning to make an ugly picture.
iht.com
China Strengthens Ties With Taleban by Signing Economic Deal
John Pomfret Washington Post Service
Thursday, September 13, 2001
BEIJING In a sign of Beijing's increasingly close ties with the
Taleban regime in Afghanistan, China has signed a memorandum
of understanding for economic and technical cooperation with
Kabul, press reports from Afghanistan and Pakistan said.
The agreement was reported Tuesday, the same day terrorists
hijacked four planes in the United States and drove them into the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A Chinese delegation
signed the deal in Kabul with the Taleban's minister of mining,
Mullah Mohammed Ishaq, the news reports said.
China's agreement with the Taleban is the most substantial part of
a series of contacts that Beijing has had with Afghanistan over the
last two years. Of all non-Muslim countries, Beijing now has the
best relationship with the isolated regime in Kabul in the world, a
senior Western diplomat said.
While Beijing is not believed to be violating any United
Nations-imposed sanctions in its dealings with the Taleban, the
contacts have disturbed high-ranking officials from the West and
some of China's central Asian neighbors. Several senior officials in
Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, in recent interviews, said they
worried that Beijing was trying to curry favor with Kabul at the
same time it made a public show of opposing terrorism which
seemed to be supported by Afghanistan.
China has helped form the Shanghai Cooperative Organization that
joins Russia and three central Asian nations in a loose grouping.
One of its main purposes is to combat cross-border terrorism and
it is specifically aimed at Afghanistan.
At the same time, China is quietly dealing with the Taleban as part
of an effort to convince its officials to close Afghan-based camps
that are used to train Muslim separatists from China's restive
Xinjiang region. Those separatists on occasion re-enter China and
launch attacks on China's security services or on civilian targets.
As part of a sweetener, Asian diplomats say, China has dangled
the prospect of providing Afghanistan with much needed help on
its infrastructure and economic development.
In 2000, two Chinese telecommunications firms, Huawei
Technologies and ZTE, signed contracts to provide limited phone
service for Kabul and Kandahar, near where the suspected
terrorist Osama bin Laden is supposedly based, regional press
reports and diplomatic sources said. Asian and Western diplomats
earlier this year identified Huawei as one Chinese firm that was
involved in helping Iraq bolster its air defenses by selling it
communications equipment.
Chinese engineers have also held negotiations with Taleban
officials about renovating an American-built power station,
according to an Asian diplomat. Meanwhile, a Taleban-led
business delegation came to Beijing earlier this year.
In addition, political contacts between China and the Taleban
government have grown. In November 2000, a delegation from
the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, an
influential think-tank run by the Ministry of State Security, visited
Kabul and Kandahar. China's ambassador to Pakistan has also
made at least one recent trip to Kabul and met with Taleban
officials in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, Asian diplomatic sources
said.
"China has got to make a decision and a decisive one on
Afghanistan," said one senior diplomat. "It can play both sides
against the middle and anger the West and other countries, or it
can really work multilaterally to resolve the terrorism problem.
Who knows which course it will take."
-ClappyTheBeatReporter |
