'Karzai's outbursts strengthen Taliban'

After dropping hints for months about Islamabad's role in the violence that has claimed 4,000 lives this year, Karzai directly accused the neighbouring Islamic republic on two separate occasions in the past week.

In his strongest language to date, an emotional Karzai alleged on Wednesday that Pakistan was trying to turn the Afghan people into "slaves", and vowed that they would never succeed.

His words have angered Pakistan's military ruler President Pervez Musharraf, who portrays his country as a bulwark in Washington's "war on terror" and says that the Taliban are a purely Afghan phenomenon.

"To hurl blame at each other is really counterproductive and strengthens the hand of the Taliban," Pakistani analyst and retired general Talat Masood told AFP.

"Pakistan and Afghanistan must jointly resolve the threat of Talibanisation."

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been bedevilled by mutual mistrust.

Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency helped the Taliban -- mainly comprising ethnic Pashtuns from either side of their shared frontier -- to rise to power in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.

Hundreds of militants fled across the mountainous border into Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal zone in late 2001 after US-led forces ousted the Taliban for supporting al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.