Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani will jointly inaugurate here the Heart of Asia today amid hopes for peace in Afghanistan and improvement of relations between Islamabad and New Delhi.
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Foreign ministers of 10 nations, together with India, China, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Iran have confirmed participation, stated the overseas ministry.
Sartaj Aziz stressed that Heart of Asia Conference is an effective platform for promoting regional economic cooperation and connectivity, with Afghanistan at its center.
The conference is expected to adopt a forward looking Islamabad Declaration titled “Enhanced Cooperation for Countering Security Threats and Promoting Connectivity in the Heart of Asia Region”, it said in a statement. The carefully-staged meeting between Prime Minister NarendraModi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif at the sidelines of the climate conference in Paris last week was the first indicator of the changing India-Pakistan scenario.
The two day ministerial meeting will discuss the key issues related to regional and national security including an exclusive discussion on Afghanistan.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said there is no evidence that Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour is dead.
The speaker insists the Taliban will continue to fight to establish an “Islamic government” in Afghanistan and resist peace overtures. “Pakistan should have an understanding of the situation in Afghanistan and use the same definition of terrorism with regard to Afghanistan as it does domestically”, Ghani told Peter Semneb, the outgoing Swedish ambassador to Afghanistan, in August, adding that the peace talks with the Taliban should be an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process.
Ghani on Monday confirmed he would travel to Pakistan this week for a regional conference, signalling new efforts to reduce tensions between the countries and revive peace talks. Pakistan’s military and civil establishments still consider the Taliban an important strategic ally, analysts say.
Given its long land border, the existence of the Pakistani Taliban and the huge number of Afghan refugees it hosts, Pakistan has great stakes in the Afghan peace process.
The conference will provide opportunity for Pakistan to further mend its relations with neighbouring Afghanistan and India, observers said.
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The “Heart of Asia” meeting, an annual gathering of Asian and other countries, comes months after the first, inconclusive talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
