KABUL  - Pakistan has made overtures to Afghanistan to resume talks over the Taliban which broke down following the assassination of Kabul’s chief peace envoy, an official said Sunday.
“After Pakistan expressed readiness, the Afghan government has also agreed to resume the talks with Pakistan over the Taliban,” Esmael Qasimyar, a senior member of the government-appointed High Peace Council, told AFP.
Karzai accused Pakistan of responsibility for the murder of peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani in September and last month the Afghan president said Pakistan was sabotaging all negotiations with the Taliban.
A government official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Pakistan had recently sent a message through the Afghan ambassador to Islamabad saying that “Pakistan is willing to resume contacts and talks with Afghanistan”. He said Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was also planning to visit Afghanistan, but no dates had been set.
Asked for comment, Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi said: “Pakistan plays a key role in talks because the militants’ leadership is believed to be in Pakistan. “We emphasise on good relations with Pakistan and hope that our relations improve, and we hope with the help of Pakistan our peace talks will resume.”
The Taliban, ousted from power by a US-led invasion in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, announced earlier this month that they planned to set up a political office in Qatar ahead of possible talks with the United States. Karzai’s government gave its blessing to that move as all sides eye a political solution to the conflict, but Kabul is reportedly wary of being sidelined in talks between the insurgents and Washington.
Meanwhile, the leader of Afghanistan’s second-biggest insurgent group said in an interview published Sunday that he was ready for ‘meaningful talks’ with all parties to end the decade-long war.
The statement by Gulbadin Hekmatyar, head of Hezb-i-Islami, comes after an announcement by the Taliban that they will open a political office in Qatar ahead of possible talks with the US. But Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister, was dismissive of the results of contacts he said Hezb-i-Islami had already had with Washington and the government of President Hamid Karzai.
“We held talks with Kabul government as well as with the Americans on different occasions, but did not receive any clear, acceptable and realistic plan from them worth mentioning,” he told the Afghan Islamic Press news agency.  “The Kabul government is powerless and the Americans have no plan acceptable to the Afghan nation and the Mujahideen.”
Any negotiations should “pave (the) way for an agreed plan for the unconditional withdrawal of the foreign forces, guaranteeing Afghanistan’s independence, Afghans’ right to decide their fate and their national integrity,” he said.