Pakistan might redeploy troops from the Afghanistan border to the Kashmir frontier amidst fresh Indo-Pak tensions, according to Islamabad's ambassador to the US, a move The New York Times said could complicate the ongoing peace talks between America and the Taliban.
Such a possibility, coming just as Pakistan's longstanding Kashmir crisis with India has escalated, could add a new element to the peace negotiations, which are said to be in the final stages and would end nearly two decades of American military entanglement in Afghanistan, The Times said on Monday.
Pakistan's ambassador, Asad Majeed Khan, emphasised in an interview with The New York Times editorial board that the Kashmir and Afghanistan issues were separate and that he was not attempting to link them.
On the contrary, he said, Pakistan hoped the US-Taliban talks would succeed and that his country was actively supporting them.
"We are doing all that we can and will continue," Khan said. "It's not an either-or situation."
"We have our hands full" on the western border, Khan said, adding, "If the situation escalates on the eastern border, we will have to undertake redeployments."
Right now in Islamabad, he said, "we are not thinking about anything but what is happening on our eastern border."
The Pakistani ambassador also said that there has been little communication between the two countries over the past week, and the crisis "unfortunately, I suspect, is going to get worse."