ISLAMABAD - A government official said on Wednesday that talks on how to restart a tentative peace dialogue with Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents would be held in Islamabad next month, contradicting an Afghan statement that they would be in Kabul.
The confusion over the venue highlighted the fraught, multi-country process to coax the Taliban to the bargaining table and end more than 14 years of war since the US-backed intervention to break the hardline Islamist movement’s grip in Afghanistan.
“Between Jan 10 and Jan 15, the first meeting will take place in Islamabad, not in Kabul,” Sartaj Aziz, senior adviser on foreign affairs to the prime minister, told reporters.
He said the meeting, involving officials from the United States, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, had been decided on this month when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Islamabad at the Heart of Asia conference.
On Tuesday, an official in Ghani’s office said the talks would be held next week in Kabul, following the weekend visit of Pakistani military chief, General Raheel Sharif.
The reason for the contradictory statements was not immediately clear and Afghan officials could not be reached. Neither side has said Taliban representatives themselves would attend.
Diplomats have been working to revive the nascent peace process, which broke down in July following an initial round, after which news was leaked of the death of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar more than two years earlier.
Aziz told journalists in Islamabad on Wednesday that representatives of the four countries will meet in line with the decision taken during the quadrilateral meeting held earlier on the occasion of the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad.
He said during the quadrilateral meeting, which was also attended by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif it was decided to establish a four-nation coordination committee to push the peace process forward.
To a question, Sartaj Aziz said, it was a shared responsibility of the four countries to take the process forward, adding, “But the peace process would be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned.”
To a question about the presence of Daish in Pakistan, the adviser on foreign affairs said, with some terrorist elements associating themselves with Daish, there was no organised presence of Daish in Pakistan.
“We have caught hold of such elements in the beginning,” he remarked, adding there was more presence of Daish in Afghanistan, which could be checked through effective border management.
In response to a question about the surprise visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Lahore on December 25, he said it was a goodwill visit and would help normalise the relations between the two neighbours.
He, however, added that this process started with the meeting between Pakistani and Indian prime ministers in Paris on November 30 and the subsequent meeting between the National Security Advisers of two countries in Bangkok on December 6, and the visit of Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj to Pakistan on December 9, on the occasion of the Heart of Asia Conference. The Adviser on Foreign Affairs emphasised the need of normalising relations between the two neighbours for mutual benefit of the two countries and their people.