Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Monday said that his government will no longer call on Islamabad to bring Taliban to the peace talks table.
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“I want to make it clear that we no longer expect Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table”, Ghani said in a sombre address to both houses of the Afghan parliament.
The minister said that after taking serious steps by Afghans government, Pakistan would review the extension of repatriation date for six month in next meeting of the Cabinet.
But he stopped short of declaring a state of national emergency, pledging war against radical groups like Islamic State, usually known in Afghanistan as Daesh, or the Haqqani network while suggesting there was still some hope of compromise with at least some Taliban.
Washington, Apr.25: The former United States ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad has said that the biggest failure of the United States in Afghanistan is its inability to persuade Afghanistan and Pakistan to cooperate with each other.
“The doors of peace negotiations remain open for those in the Taliban who are ready to stop the bloodshed and lay their arms down”.
Taliban insurgents will suffer in battlefield and eventually request for peace talks, he went on to say.
Pakistan denies harbouring and aiding the Taliban but Ghani urged its government to “fulfil promises and carry out military operations against those whose bases are in Pakistan”. Afghanistan has seen a major spike in violence since the Taliban launched their annual spring offensive earlier this month. The “time for unjustified amnesty” has ended and terrorists will be executed, he said. Over recent days, Afghan security forces have fought back Taliban attacks on Kunduz, the northern city that briefly fell to the insurgents previous year.
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“And we did again – after this week’s attack, we have pressed the government of Pakistan to follow up on its expressed commitment not to discriminate between terror groups regardless of their agenda or their affiliation by undertaking concrete action against the Haqqanis”, she added.
