Afghans suspend talks with Pak to work closely with the US and India to plan the country's future
Submitted 1 hr 9 mins ago
Afghanistan plans to suspend an effort to work with Pakistan and the U.S. to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, Afghan officials said, taking a tougher line with Pakistan after last week's assassination of Kabul's top peace negotiator.
Senior U.S., Pakistani and Afghan officials had been set to meet in Kabul on Oct. 8 to discuss ways to get insurgents into peace talks and end the 10-year-old conflict. Afghanistan has now decided to cancel the meeting, deputy national-security adviser Shaida Mohammad Abdali said.
Afghanistan also dropped plans for Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to attend a meeting in Kabul at the end of October of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint Commission for Reconciliation and Peace in Afghanistan, a three-month-old bilateral initiative intended to galvanize the peace process. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on Afghanistan's moves.
The U.S. still plans to send Marc Grossman, the State Department's special representative for the region, to Kabul for talks next week that were meant to include the trilateral meeting, said Gavin Sundwall, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy.
The decision to scuttle the meeting could complicate U.S.-led efforts to cultivate a regional dialogue that would make it easier to withdraw most coalition forces as planned by late 2014.
Afghan leaders have been trying to compel Pakistan to openly facilitate talks between Afghanistan and Taliban leaders. Officials in President Hamid Karzai's government say they are convinced Pakistan is intent on disrupting its attempts to engage the Taliban without interference from Islamabad.
Though Afghan officials have criticized Pakistan before, the cancellations signal a change in strategy. "From now on Afghanistan will follow 'trust but verify' approach toward Pakistan, in particular with regard to our peace effort," said Mr. Abdali, suggesting that Kabul would, as a policy, not readily accept Pakistan's offers of help.
Afghanistan's president and other senior leaders announced Thursday that they were rethinking the country's relationship with Pakistan and its negotiations with the Taliban because talks had yielded so little.
As a result, the leaders said, they planned to work closely with the United States, Europe and India to plan the country's future.
The shift in Afghanistan's policies emerged in a statement released by the presidential palace on Thursday after a meeting the night before of senior government officials, including the two vice presidents, the national security adviser and several former military commanders who are close advisers to President Hamid Karzai and who fought to push the Russians out of the country in the 1980s.
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