Kabul: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates traded barbs on Wednesday during briefly overlapping visits to Afghanistan, where Washington has troops at war but Tehran has growing clout.
Ahmadinejad, who arrived as Gates was wrapping up a three-day visit, told a news conference alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai that U.S. and Western troops would never defeat terrorism by waging war in Afghanistan.
Gates said earlier in the week Iran was playing a "double game" in Afghanistan by being friendly to the government while trying to undermine the United States. He said on Wednesday he had passed those concerns on to Karzai.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband joined the fray during a speech in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was focused on strategies to end the war in Afghanistan.
Miliband rapped Ahmadinejad's latest comments in Kabul as "unhelpful posturing and bombast." Washington, which will have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2010, says it believes Iran provides some support for militants there, although not nearly on the same scale as in Iraq, another Iranian neighbour where U.S. troops are fighting.
The Afghan insurgency is mainly led by Sunni Islamists, who are sworn enemies of Shi'ite Iran.
But Tehran blames Western military intervention in Afghanistan for causing instability and Ahmadinejad turned Gates' earlier comment around.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, March 11, 2010, 10:58