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Thursday March 28, 2024

‘Afghan peace process an opportunity for Pakistan to develop regional coherence’

By Rasheed Khalid
January 04, 2019

Islamabad : Former Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir has said that Afghanistan’s economic stability is more important during political and peace processes but regretted that that the stakeholders were not paying due attention to social and economic development of Afghanistan.

Mr Salman was speaking at a special seminar on “Afghan Peace Process: Implications and Stability” organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute here Thursday.

Mr Salman said that political and peace processes had been destroyed since long. He said that Pakistan should also focus on CPEC plus by expanding CPEC to Afghanistan that is in the interest of both China and Pakistan. He cautioned that if there is no consensus during peace process till middle of this year, US might withdraw its troops, resulting in civil war and chaos in Afghanistan. However, he favoured an orderly US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Ambassador (r) Ayaz Wazir said that Pakistan should support Afghan-owned and Afghans-led peace resolution and should pursue its own interest instead of meddling in intra-Afghan affairs. He said that Pakistan is not prepared to handle Afghanistan, as we failed to handle our tribal areas.

He said that today, writ of Afghan government is historic low and Afghan Taliban have control over 70 percent of the total territory which pushed the stakeholders especially USA to talk and negotiate. As Afghanistan’s presidential elections are due in April this year, Afghani including Taliban would never accept any political set-up similar to the incumbent government.

Imtiaz Gul, head of Centre for Research and Security Studies, said that progress towards the recent Afghan peace process is a sea change in last couple of weeks. He said that effort for peace and stability in Afghanistan is a shared and regional responsibility of all stakeholders. Efforts should be made to take Iran and Russia on board for the success of the negotiations, he said adding that responsibility also lies on Taliban who should give guarantee to the stakeholders that all minorities in Afghanistan would remain unharmed and there would remain ceasefire till peace talks concluded. He further said that we have to develop a comprehensive strategy and policy for Afghan refugees to counter the negative propaganda.

Ambassador (r) Shafqat KakaKhel, said that every country including Pakistan and Afghanistan has a major stake in peace and stability. Stressing the need of mutual cooperation, he said that there is a tremendous potential of medical tourism between Pakistan and Afghanistan where Peshawar city can be a hub for medical tourism.

Warning against falling prey to strategic depth, he said that we should strive for economic depth where we have around 5 billion dollar trade potential. He said that Pakistan should not only contribute in restoration of peace but also sustainability of peace, which would reinforce the unity between the two states.

Dr Shafqat Munir, Senior Advisor and Director Resilient Development Program, SDPI, said that Afghanistan always remained a key diplomatic challenge for Pakistan on security and internal political front. As Afghan peace process enters a new phase, it is hoped that the peace and stability would prevail in the region, concluded.

In the question hour, Mr Wazir said that India during peace process would remain quiet and wait for its opportune time. He proposed that if both countries’ intelligence agencies sign an MoU of mutual cooperation on sharing cross border intelligence, it would prove a real corner stone for building confidence between Afgh-anistan and Pakistan.