that only members of its Qatar-based political office are allowed to talk peace. Privately, Taliban members have indicated to the Afghan government that they wanted clarification from Washington on the future US and coalition troop presence in Afghanistan and that they wanted to talk to US officials about this.
A spokeswoman for the US Embassy in Kabul couldn’t immediately comment on the issue.Beijing has become a more influential player in Afghanistan in recent months, saying it wants to help facilitate reconciliation in the country. In May, with the help of Islamabad, it hosted a meeting between Afghanistan’s top peace envoy and former Taliban officials in the city of Urumqi, in Western China.
Mariana Baabar adds: In the Narendra Modi like fashion, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani gave the ‘breaking news’ to the region when he tweeted on Tuesday that a delegation from the Afghan High Peace Council of Afghanistan had travelled to Islamabad for negotiations with the Afghan Taliban.
“A delegation from the High Peace Council of Afghanistan has travelled to Pakistan for negotiations with the Taliban,” Ashraf Ghani stated on his official twitter account.With Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif holding the portfolio of foreign minister and the foreign policy adviser and special assistant also accompanying him abroad, strict silence was observed at the Foreign Office at an extremely important juncture of the Pak-Afghan relations.
Earlier, during the PPP government, the Foreign Office and the Afghan High Peace Council had both in a joint statement agreed to work closely with other international partners to remove the names from the UN sanctions list of the potential negotiators amongst the Taliban.
In support of peace and reconciliation process and in response to the requests of the Afghan government/HPC, a number of Taliban detainees are being released. The two sides appealed to the Taliban and other armed opposition groups to participate in the Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation process to end the violence and asked all concerned countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US to facilitate safe passage to potential negotiators to advance the reconciliation process.
Meetings between the Afghan Taliban and representatives of Kabul have been recently held in the Middle East, Europe and China though both sides have kept these deliberations away from the limelight. In a progressive move, the Afghan delegation included women in these talks with the Taliban.
Foreign news wires also spoke of the Afghan deputy foreign minister Hekmat Karzai leading the delegation accompanied by former governor Haji Deen Muhammad to Islamabad but there was no confirmation when The News contacted the Foreign Office and Afghan ambassador.