BERLIN - German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Tuesday said that without Pakistan, there will not be any solution in Afghanistan. He made the statement after receiving his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar in Berlin for on a state visit with a focus on the situation in Afghanistan.

"Without Pakistan there won't be any solution in Afghanistan. Without a stable Afghanistan, Pakistan won't be stable. The support of the reconciliation in Afghanistan is an essential task which we both share," he said in the meeting.

"We are committed to achieving stability in Afghanistan and we must acknowledge German support to an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned, Afghan-driven peace process. I think Germany clearly stands out in the world today as a country which has been fully supportive of this process and as a country which has tried to do whatever was in its power," he added.

Germany has the third largest military contingent serving in the NATO force in Afghanistan after the US and UK with around 4,900 troops, mostly based in northern Kunduz province. Fifty-three German soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the start of 2001.

Rabbani Khar, on her first official visit to Germany, expressed her country's disappointment over "unilateral military actions" on its soil, saying that while Pakistan was restricting militant's movements from crossing into Afghanistan, the region needed a "matching effort" from the Afghan side of the border in order to get the desired results.

"To support reconciliation and dialogue, Pakistan has tried to ensure an environment that restricts the space for those who would seek to ambush efforts for peace. Pakistan has deployed close to 150,000 troops and established over 900 check posts along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border," Rabbani Khar said while addressing the German Council on Foreign Relations.

"A matching effort on the Afghanistan side of the border would dramatically improve our chances for collective success in this endeavor," she added. (Tolo News)