Pashtun leader, Muhammad Usman Kakar, addresses a protest meeting in the Pakistan-Afghan border city of Chaman, Pakistan, yesterday. Several thousand ethnic Pashtuns rallied in Chaman, accusing Pakistan of meddling in Afghanistan's affairs. - Reuters

CHAMAN, Pakistan (Reuters):

Several thousand ethnic Pashtuns rallied in a Pakistani town near the Afghan border yesterday, accusing Pakistan of meddling in Afghanistan's affairs.

The protesters, Pakistani Pashtuns and some Afghan Pashtun refugees, accused Pakistan of providing sanctuary to Taliban militants, who have this year unleashed the most intense violence in Afghanistan since their 2001 ousting from power.

"We demand the government of Pakistan stops playing its game in Afghanistan," Hamid Khan Achakzai, a leader of a Pakistani Pashtun nationalist party and a former member of Parliament, told the rally in the southwestern town of Chaman.

"This duplicitous policy poses serious danger to the entire world," Achakzai said.

Pashtuns live on both sides of the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border.

Afghan complaints that Taliban insurgents are operating from safe havens on the Pakistani side have seriously strained relations between the neighbours this year.

Pakistan nurtured the Taliban after they emerged from Pashtun tribal lands along the border in the early 1990s, but officially ended support after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

A major ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, Pakistan denies helping the Taliban, but says some militants are able to cross the porous frontier.

Protesters at the rally in Chaman shouted "Down with terrorism in Afghanistan" and "Down with the policy of interference in Afghanistan".

Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month asked two ethnic Pashtun Pakistani politicians, including the head of an Islamist group, for help to stem the Taliban insurgency.

Pakistan accuses its old rival India, which has close relations with Karzai, of stirring ethnic unrest in Pakistani areas on the Afghan border.

The border areas have traditionally been strongholds of conservative Islamist groups but Pashtun nationalist parties, which want the merger of Pashtun areas on both sides of the frontier, also have support.