Ghani offers comprehensive talks to Pakistan

KABUL: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday reached out to Pakistan, offering comprehensive negotiations to bring peace to the troubled relationship between the two countries.

“We want peace which is based on unanimous political views,” he said in his Eid address at the president house here. He said peace with Pakistan was Afghanistan’s national agenda adding that the world now knew that it was not possible to pressurise Afghanistan into doing anything.

Like most Muslim countries, Afghanistan celebrated Eid on Friday while in Pakistan it will be celebrated on Saturday (today).

The Afghan president said
the country was ready to take steps for regional peace and stability, based on logical debate and reasoning.

“I am reaching out for peace to everyone because peace is God’s commandment,” he said.

Ghani called on the Taliban, who have been fighting to drive out international forces backing the government, to accept peace and lay down the arms.

“It is time for the armed opposition of Afghanistan to choose whether they are fed on the milk of the mothers of this country, and are inspired by this nation, or whether they are the tools for disunity, chaos, used by outsiders,” he said.

He added that peace negotiations were open for all but Afghanistan will not bow down before any group or country.

The statement from the Afghan president comes a day after US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered additional troops to the war-torn country, 10 days after President Donald Trump announced a surge in US forces to battle advances by the Taliban.

On August 21, Trump announced a new Afghanistan policy to knock back the Taliban that could see thousands more US troops deployed, on top of the 11,000 there now.

The decision came after a deep review of strategy in which US military leaders convinced Trump to back off his election campaign pledge to pull out of the war-torn country.

Afghanistan routinely accuses Pakistan of harbouring Taliban, while Islamabad says its enemies have found sanctuaries in Afghanistan.