Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi received on Thursday a Taliban political delegation and called on the Islamist movement to promptly relaunch its stalled Afghan reconciliation negotiations with the United States, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said
KABUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd October, 2019) Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi received on Thursday a Taliban political delegation and called on the Islamist movement to promptly relaunch its stalled Afghan reconciliation negotiations with the United States, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.
"While appreciating Taliban's serious engagement in the peace process, he [Qureshi] underscored the need to take these efforts to their logical conclusion. He noted that the existing, broad regional and international consensus for achieving peace in Afghanistan at the earliest provided an unprecedented opportunity that must not be lost. It was up to the parties to the conflict in Afghanistan to grasp this opportunity. FM Qureshi expressed the hope that the currently paused peace process would be restarted at an early date," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Qureshi reaffirmed Islamabad's commitment to ensuring peace in Afghanistan and emphasized the need for all parties to the conflict to provide an appropriate environment for the negotiations.
"Thanking Pakistan for the hospitality, the TPC [Taliban Political Commission] delegation appreciated Pakistan's support for peace in Afghanistan. Both sides agreed on the need for earliest resumption of the peace process," the statement added.
The Taliban and the United States have for nearly a year been attempting to negotiate a peace deal that would ensure the withdrawal of foreign troops in exchange for the movement's guarantee that the country will not become a safe haven for terrorists. The talks, however, have excluded the Afghan government because the Taliban consider it to be a US puppet. The latest round of talks in Doha finished on September 1 with US Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad saying that Washington and the Taliban were "on the threshold of an agreement."
On September 7, following an explosion in Kabul that killed a US soldier, President Donald Trump said via Twitter that he canceled plans to hold secret Camp David talks with the Taliban leadership and Afghan leaders that were scheduled for the next day.
