ISLAMABAD (AP) — Taliban
chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was traveling under a false name with fake
Pakistani identity documents when he was killed by a U.S. drone strike last
week, the foreign affairs adviser to Pakistan's prime minister said Thursday.
At a news conference in
the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Sartaj Aziz said authorities were awaiting
DNA test results, after which Mansour's body will be handed over to his
relatives.
But "all indicators"
at present point that it was Mansour, Aziz added.
He spoke a day after the
Taliban announced that the group's council of leaders — at a meeting,
presumably in Pakistan — had unanimously selected Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada
as its new head following the death of Mansour.
Mansour had entered
Pakistan from Iran under a false name, with a Pakistani ID card and passport,
Aziz told reporters. He refused to elaborate, saying that Pakistani authorities
were still investigating the reason for Mansour's trip to Iran.
Pakistani authorities
have detained two officials from southwestern Baluchistan who helped Mansour
obtain his Pakistani national identity card, the interior ministry said.
The Afghan Taliban have
been fighting to overthrow the Kabul government since 2001, when their
extremist Islamic regime was removed by the U.S.-led invasion. Pakistani
authorities have long been accused by both Kabul and Washington of giving
shelter and support to some Taliban leaders — an accusation that Islamabad
denies.
Aziz condemned the U.S.
drone strike, saying it was a "violation of Pakistan's sovereignty"
and said Pakistan had "conveyed our serious concern to the United States
on this issue."
The drone attack had
"undermined the Afghan peace process," Aziz said, but he added that
he still believed that the way to resolve the Afghanistan's conflict is through
negotiation.
"In our view there
is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. The use of force for
past 15 years has failed to deliver peace," he said.
During an official visit
to Japan Thursday, President Barack Obama said that he was not optimistic about
a change for the better any time soon after the killing of Mansour.
"In the short term,
we anticipate the Taliban will continue to pursue an agenda of violence,"
he said. But Obama added that he was hopeful that eventually there will be more
progress "when there are those within the community that surround the
Taliban that recognize their goals are best achieved by negotiations."
Obama, speaking at a
news conference in Shima, Japan, on the sidelines of a summit of world leaders,
said he never expected "a liberal Democrat to be the newly appointed
leader of the Taliban."
"This continues to
be an organization that sees violence as a strategy for obtaining its goals and
moving its agenda forward in Afghanistan," Obama said.
"My hope, although
not my expectation, is that there comes a point at which the Taliban recognizes
that they are not going to simply be able to overrun the country and that what
they need to be doing is to enter into serious reconciliation talks that are
led by Afghans," the U.S. president also said. "If that happens,
that's something that the United States and others would support. But I am
doubtful that that will be happening any time soon and we'll have to wait and
see how those things develop."
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Associated Press Writer
Nancy Benac in Shima, Japan contributed to this report
