Pakistan committed to support Afghan Peace Talks

Pakistan representative in the United Nations says Pakistan is committed to support Afghan-Taliban peace talks and Islamabad will provide all facilities for Afghan government Peace Talks with Taliban.

Pakistan representative in the United Nations, Maliha Loodhi noted that Islamabad plays an active role in Afghan peace talks and for brining stability to Afghanistan it will provide the fields for national unity government and Taliban.

She also urged the international community to fully support Peace Talks between Afghanistan-Taliban that peace and stability establish in Afghanistan.

But some of Afghan parliament representatives said Pakistan has never stood by its commitments and this time tries to reach its strategic aims.

A senior Afghan lawmaker has warned President Ashraf Ghani about relying on Pakistan to help broker peace talks with the Taliban, citing what he said was Islamabad’s history of supporting the insurgents.

“I am in support of peace and stability in Afghanistan, but I don’t have much faith in Pakistan’s honesty over peace talks,” Fazil Hadi Muslimyar, speaker of the upper house of parliament said.

Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of backing the Taliban to push its own agenda in the war-torn country, and Ghani’s rapprochement with Islamabad since coming to power last year has led to unease in some quarters.

The dysfunctional relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan has deep roots. In effect, the territories now making up Pakistan were all conquered by Britain, or ceded by pliant Afghan emirs, in the nineteenth century prior to the Durand Line Agreement in 1893.
Kabul’s attempts under successive leaders to disavow or reverse these arrangements are wellknown. All failed. As a direct consequence, Afghanistan was the only state to oppose Pakistan’s membership in the UN in 1947 when a vote on rejoining Afghanistan was disallowed in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP).

Reported by Abdul Aziz Karimi