News
Friday, February 03, 2012
Pak ready to push Afghan Taliban to make peace: Khar* FM says full-fledged talks are still ‘miles away’ and could only begin once Afghan govt determines how process should be structured
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Thursday it was willing to do whatever Afghans wanted to end the 10 years of war with the Taliban, but insisted the process should not be led by the Americans or any other foreign power.
A day after talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai billed as a fence-mending visit designed to ease frosty ties, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar sought to refute perceptions that Islamabad was an obstacle to peace.
“We’re willing to do whatever the Afghans want or expect,” Khar said when asked whether Pakistan was ready to push the Haqqani network towards peace talks, but stopped short of naming the group or commenting further.
She said Karzai was due in Islamabad in the middle of the month and that she would travel with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to Qatar, where the Taliban have set up a liaison office for talks with the Americans.
She said it was “not in anyone’s interest” for Afghanistan to slide back into the chaos of the past, but said Pakistan had “so far” not played any substantial role in the contacts there between the Americans and the Taliban. Analysts say that Kabul and Islamabad have felt sidelined by the Qatar contacts. Khar did not comment explicitly, but said it was imperative that the Afghans were central to any eventual peace process, still “miles away”.
“It is Afghanistan to decide and as a friendly neighbour, it is our job and responsibility and will to stand strongly behind that. The only prerequisite that Pakistan has is that it should be an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-driven, Afghan-backed process which has the ownership of Afghan people.”
A leaked NATO report based on material from interrogations of more than 4,000 captured Taliban and al Qaeda operatives, accused Pakistan’s security services of still backing the Taliban. Khar took a swipe, saying that media reports and leaks do not reflect Pakistan’s “dialogue” with NATO and the United States.
She also signalled that Pakistan could shortly end a more than two-month blockade on NATO supplies entering Afghanistan for foreign forces.
Responding as to when parliament would pass the review, she said, “I’m going to hopefully ensure and push it very hard that it is no later than within a week... first half of February is probable.”
“I cannot pre-empt what the parliament is going to decide but I would assume that should not be so much of a problem,” she said when asked if the recommendations would include reopening the border. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk