Pakistan’s foreign secretary calls for ‘world to unite’ over Afghanistan’s crisis

Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Asad Majeed Khan said this week that the world shares a “common responsibility” to tackle the problems facing Afghanistan through dialogue, instead of trying to isolate the nation.

In an interview with Nikkei, Khan said the international community must “come together, to see this as a challenge.”

“If there is an economic or a political or a security meltdown, it affects every country, particularly in the immediate neighborhood,” Khan said.

“We have no other option but to engage, because whatever happens in Afghanistan doesn’t stay in Afghanistan only. We are closely engaged, to see that the situation doesn’t get any worse.”

Khan said Pakistan shares Western concerns over the rights of women in Afghanistan, but added that isolating the country would invite greater instability.

“Stability is a common priority for all the countries,” he said. “We need to come together, to engage with them.”

But Khan dismissed the idea of engaging with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group of militants close to the IEA who are accused of having carried out a spate of attacks in Pakistan over the past year.

“I think that we have spoken quite clearly on numbers of occasions that negotiation is not an option,” Khan said. “We will not negotiate with TTP.”

A cease-fire agreement struck between the government and the TTP fell apart last year.