<p><span style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px;" class="Apple-style-span">Wednesday, 15 Jul, 2009</span></span></p> <p><span style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;" class="Apple-style-span"> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;"><strong>LONDON: Chairman Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf Imran Khan on Tuesday evening told a joint audience of Foreign Press Association and Commonwealth Club members that British policy in Afghanistan was ???mad???, ???given Albert Einstein???s definition of madness as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results???.</strong> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;">He said current policy was helping Al Qaeda, as military action simply provoked more militancy in response. </p> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;">???The US and British governments were badly advised, with officials from both countries only meeting people on the ground who told them what they wanted to hear,??? he added.  In his opinion, the conflict as currently pursued would go on and on just as it did in the past with the Russians, the British, and the Mughals. </p> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;">He said a completely different policy was needed in order to establish a government of consensus in Afgha-nistan. </p> <p style="margin: 0px;"><br style="line-height: 1.5em;" /> According to Mr Khan, this was not an ideological conflict between moderate and extreme forms of Islam; ???it is a political struggle needing a political solution as in Northern Ireland???.</p> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;">He said there should be an exit strategy from Afghanistan, ???while the government of Pakistan should pull troops out of the border regions???.</p> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;">He said Pakistan was facing economic collapse; just as Cambodia had suf-fered huge ???collateral damage??? during the Vietnam war, ???so Pakistan was now facing the same from the Afghan war???.</p> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;">He said military action led to civilian deaths which in turn led to more militancy; ???the idea that current policy would lead to a happy, democratic peaceful Afghanistan was a pipedream???.</p> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> <p style="margin: 0px;"> </p> </span></span></p>