On Monday, Pakistan will host top officials from Afghanistan, the United States, and China to discuss an upcoming resumption of peace talks between the Afghan national unity government in Kabul and the leadership of the Taliban.
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“It is important that no preconditions are attached to the reconciliation process, as it will create difficulties in bringing Taliban to the negotiating table”, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said at the meeting. The presence of such a list was announced Sunday by Javid Faisal, deputy spokesman for Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.
Pakistan had agreed to cut off financial support to Taliban fighters based in Pakistani cities, including Quetta and Peshawar, Faisal said. Chinese special envoy for Afghanistan Deng Xijun, U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olsan and Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry led their delegations. The meeting, which will also include Pakistan, is to be held in Islamabad, said the official.
Mr. Khalilzad was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Afghanistan and Iran during the Bush administration, while Mr. Dobbins was the Special U.S. Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under the current Obama administration.
The Quadrilateral Coordination Group – comprising representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States – is scheduled to meet in Kabul on January 18 “to hold discussions on a roadmap”, the statement added.
Khost is among the relatively volatile provinces in southeastern Afghanistan where anti-government armed militant groups including the notorious Haqqani network insurgents are actively operating in a number of its districts.
Faisal said Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, has been delivering “key messages” that his country “is honest and loyal and will honestly fight against terrorism”.
A first round of dialogue with the Taliban themselves was held in July but collapsed after the group belatedly confirmed their leader Mullah Omar was dead.
It’s believed the group is divided among those who would be willing to work within an Afghan government, and hard-liners who remain committed to trying to restore the Taliban to power in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, a breakaway Taliban group said Monday it was ready for talks.
“They [the Taliban] want to enter talks as a single entity rather than as different groups”, Yusufzai asserted.
Renewed peace efforts come amid spiralling violence in Afghanistan, with past year, after the withdrawal of most foreign forces at the end of 2014, one of the bloodiest on record.
Putting sustained and intensified pressure on Pakistan is the only viable option for America to make it act against terror networks and cooperate on the fragile Afghan peace process, former US diplomats have said.
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Afghan President Ashraf Ghani took part in a regional “Heart of Asia” conference last month in Islamabad, which called for the resumption of the Afghan-Taliban peace negotiations.
