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Thursday March 28, 2024

US special envoy meets Pak officials

By Mariana Baabar
October 10, 2018

ISLAMABAD: A US delegation led by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, US Special Representative on Afghan Reconciliation, arrived in Islamabad and met with Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, while earlier holding delegation-level talks with Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua and her team at the Foreign Office.

The Foreign Office decided that no official statement about the visit would be made, which is indicative that there was no agreement on any issue between the US and the PTI government. A few tweets were posted by the spokesman at the Foreign Office confirming the talks and noting that the Pak-US delegations comprised of security, defence and diplomatic officials from both sides.

The talks took place at a time when a suicide attack in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand, at an election rally killed eight and wounded 10 people. Media reports quoted the state-run radio as saying that the foreign minister reiterated that Pakistan will continue to play its role for a political solution to the Afghan conflict, and both sides after the meeting agreed to continue cooperationon Afghan reconciliation process. Zalmay Khalizad arrived from Kabul where he had met with President Ashraf Ghani and will now visit Qatar where he is speculated to hold face to face talks with the Afghan Taliban in their political office there. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also part of his itinerary.

He is no stranger to Afghanistan having served as an ambassador as well as a special envoy in 2011. AFP reported that Khalilzad has had a prickly relationship with Pakistan and has often accused Islamabad of fomenting violence in Afghanistan by supporting the Taliban. He has even said the United States should declare Pakistan a terrorist state.

With no statement from the Foreign Office, there is no indication how the delegation-level talks went and whether Khalizad lived up to his reputation of not mincing his words. Last Thursday, the Foreign Office had stated that it was a shared responsibility to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table and one country should be expected to undertake this task unilaterally.

“You are aware that after concluding the Afghanistan Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity (APAPPS) on May 14, 2018 in Islamabad, the two sides held the inaugural session in Kabul on July 22.

Holding of the inaugural session just two days prior to the elections in Pakistan signifies the importance Pakistan attaches to its relations with Afghanistan,” the spokesman had remarked. Pakistan is currently working with Afghanistan to finalise the dates for the next meeting, which is to be held in Islamabad, to review the progress under various working groups constituted under the mechanism.