NEW YORK: Former President Pervez Musharraf has said Kabul must share power with the extremist group Taliban and block Indian influence if it wants peace in the country.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published here on Wednesday, he said that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s September inauguration presented a new opportunity for reconciliation betw­e­en the government and Taliban and related insurgent groups.

“Ashraf Ghani is a balanced man,” he said. “I think he’s a great hope.” Pakistan and India must stay away and avoid engaging in proxy war, he said.

Take a look: ISI cultivated Taliban to counter Indian action against Pakistan: Musharraf

The retired general said that India had provided weapons, training and equipment to ethnic Baloch separatists inside Afghanistan. He said that US and its allies had consistently failed to consider Pakistan’s concerns, forcing Islamabad to rely on other militant groups inside Afghanistan to prop up its interests.

The WSJ said given his close links to defence and intelligence officials, Mr Musharraf’s remarks offered a window into official Pakistani thinking on the peace process, a policy that was often obscured by careful diplomatic language.

Mr Musharraf also acknowledged in the interview — rare for a top Pakistani official, even a former one — that India and Pakistan had been engaged in a long-running proxy war on Afghan soil that fed the conflict. But, he said, his and Islamabad’s role in nurturing the Taliban and allied militant groups operating in Afgha­nistan were a legitimate counterweight against its rival India there.

“There are enemies of Pakistan that have to be countered,” he said. “Certainly if there’s an enemy of mine, I will use somebody to counter him.”

Syed Akbaruddin, spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, told WSJ: “We don’t need to respond to voices from the wilderness. Such voices just try to occupy news space.”

“The world must realise that we may not like the face of Mullah Omar…but that is how life is, that is what Afghanistan is,” said Mr Musharraf.

His remarks come as Mr Ghani’s administration plays up hopes that Afghan officials will be able to negotiate with the Taliban leadership in the coming weeks.

But he said those groups were an instrument to counter India’s influence on the ground in Afghanistan and insisted that former US President George W. Bush “knew that I am not playing a double game” with Washington.

Published in Dawn February 26th , 2015

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