Author: Agencies
Publication: Expressindia.com
Date: September 24, 2006
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=74365
Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the international
community to put an end to Islamic schools that teach hatred and produce suicide
bombers, ahead of summits next week with the United States and Pakistan.
Madrassas, or Islamic schools, are "teaching
hatred rather than religion, (teaching) that some people we must hate, that
some people we must destroy," Karzai said at a public luncheon in Montreal.
The Afghan president said it "will take
a lot of sacrifice from Afghans, and from the rest of the world ... to get
rid of those places who in the name of madrassas, in the name of religious
schools, are teaching hatred to young people and sending them against us,
who are actually training suicide bombers against us."
His comments, at the event hosted by the Conseil
des Relations Internationales, an academic organization, came on the final
day of a three-day visit to Canada.
In an interview published yesterday in the
national Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail, Karzai said that Pakistan, Afghanistan's
neighbour, must find the political will to eliminate its breeding grounds
of terrorism if Afghanistan is to know peace.
Karzai said the Pakistani military must take
action and other countries need to pressure them to do so, the newspaper said.
"We have to talk to Pakistan and we have
to convince them that it is not in their interest, that it is going to hurt
all of us eventually," he was quoted as saying.
On Wednesday, Karzai, US President George
W Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf are to hold three-way talks
on the US-led fight against terrorism.
