By Candace Rondeaux and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 12 -- Security forces have launched a wide-ranging search for the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, Pakistani government officials said Tuesday, a day after the envoy disappeared in a tribal area that has recently been the scene of intense Taliban activity.

Ambassador Tariq Azizuddin was reported missing late Monday, the same day he, his driver and a security guard left the northwestern city of Peshawar en route to Kabul, the Afghan capital. His disappearance occurred within hours of the abduction of two Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission maintenance workers and their driver near the northwestern village of Mir Ali, less than 100 miles from the Afghan border.

Pakistani government officials said they believed the two incidents were unrelated. But the ambassador's disappearance and the kidnappings, only days before this politically fragile nation's Feb. 18 parliamentary elections, heightened fears of unrest. Thousands of Pakistani troops were deployed Tuesday to provide protection at about 64,000 polling stations.

Government officials declined Tuesday to say whether they believed Azizuddin, a 30-year veteran of the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, had been abducted, but they said security forces were searching for him in the Khyber Agency, a rugged tribal region along a highway that passes through Peshawar and crosses the famed Khyber Pass at Torkham to enter Afghanistan.

"We are trying to find the ambassador. We hope we will find him soon," said retired Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

Pakistani officials in Kabul said Azizuddin had just returned to Pakistan from a conference in Tokyo and decided to drive from Islamabad back to Kabul, an all-day journey. A spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul said officials there had tried unsuccessfully to contact Azizuddin on his cellphone hours after he left around 10:30 a.m.

"At first we thought there was a problem with the signal because he was traveling through mountainous areas," said the spokesman, Muhammad Naeem. "At 3 p.m., we checked with the officials at Torkham, and they said he had not crossed. Then we became very worried."

Naeem also said local authorities in the Khyber tribal agency had reported that the ambassador's car had not passed through their territory. Cheema said security officials are looking for Azizuddin in an area close to Peshawar.

Pakistani news outlets reported that Azizuddin had been abducted by the Pakistani Taliban and that the organization was demanding the release of Mansour Dadullah, a Taliban commander who was captured Monday by Pakistani forces in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.

Cheema said the Interior Ministry had received no such demand and disputed the suggested connection between Azizuddin's disappearance and Dadullah's capture.

Local militias rather than Pakistani forces patrol the tribal agencies, several of which are largely controlled by Taliban militants. The Khyber Agency is the most modern of the seven tribal regions, and the highway to the border is heavily traveled. But extremists have been increasingly active there in the past year and are suspected to be behind the disappearance four days ago of four Pakistani workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A regional government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Azizuddin's vehicle had been spotted twice near the village of Bara, close to Peshawar. The official said that the envoy's disappearance was being treated as a suspected kidnapping but that there were few clues in the case.

Mohammed Sadiq, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Islamabad, said Azizuddin had served as ambassador in Kabul for the past two years. His previous posts included chief of protocol in the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad, ambassador to Bosnia and consul general in Los Angeles.

Constable reported from Kabul. Special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.