“The participants agreed to continue talks to create an environment conducive for peace and reconciliation process”, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
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Sources in Ghani’s office described the meeting as crucial because it showed the Taliban were ready to negotiate directly with the government they have been battling since they were ousted from power by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Tuesday’s attack comes a week after a Taliban suicide auto bomber hit a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation military convoy on the main road to Kabul airport, killing at least two Afghan civilians and wounding around 17.
As US and other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops are drawing down their numbers in Afghanistan, the Taliban insurgency continues to rage across wide areas of the country.
The discrepancy in the timing could not immediately be reconciled, however the officials both confirm that Afghan government representatives, including Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai, had travelled to Pakistan for the meeting.
The airstrike came after a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a vehicle near a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation auto in Kabul, injuring three people.
The growing presence of fighters loyal to Islamic State, mostly made up of disgruntled members of the Taliban, is an added concern.
“[The] delegation included representatives from all parts of Afghan society”, the official said. Top battlefield commander Abdul Qayum Zakir, a ex- Guantanamo Bay detainee, objected to sending the delegation for talks with Kabul, according to a lower-level Taliban commander in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan. Taliban and government representatives have met informally in the past. But those attitudes are thought to have been in flux since December, when the Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot of the Afghan group, carried out a gruesome attack against a school in Peshawar.
“This is an important step toward advancing prospects for a credible peace”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said by phone he was unaware of Tuesday’s meeting and couldn’t immediately comment.
Elements of the Afghan Taliban have chafed at their dependence on Pakistan and sought to keep it at a distance from its worldwide outreach efforts.
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The participants were duly mandated by their respective leadership and expressed their collective desire to bring peace to Afghanistan and the region.
