Ghani heads to Pakistan with eye on Taliban peace talks
15 Nov TN
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has arrived in Pakistan’s capital,
Islamabad, for his first state visit to neighbouring Pakistan, seeking
to improve ties that are crucial to his hopes of reviving Taliban peace
talks as US troops end their 13-year war.
Ghani and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are expected to attend
a cricket match between the two countries in Islamabad on Saturday,
officials said, in a public demonstration of better relations despite
fraught cross-border tensions.
Both nations accuse each other of allowing militants to shelter in
the border regions and launch bloody attacks that threaten regional
stability.
But diplomats say that Ghani´s presidency, which started in
September, presents a major opportunity at a time when US-led NATO
troops are withdrawing from the fight against the Taliban.”Both sides
are very interested in seizing the opportunity presented by the
political transition,” US ambassador in Islamabad Richard Olson said
this week. “There is quite genuinely a basis for a new relationship
between Afghanistan and Pakistan.Both sides are aware of this historical
moment and making efforts to seize it.”Pakistan was one of only three
countries to recognise the hardline Taliban regime that ruled Kabul from
1996 until 2001 when it was deposed by a US-led international military
coalition.
The long-standing tensions between the two countries were highlighted
last week when a US Pentagon report said Pakistan continues to use
“proxy forces” to destabilise Afghanistan.
A foreign office spokeswoman in Islamabad said Ghani´s two-day visit
would start on Friday.
Afghan cricket board spokesman Mohammad Aziz Gharwal said the two
leaders plan to attend a match between Pakistan A and Afghanistan A on
Saturday.
Ghani, who emerged as president after a long dispute over fraud-mired
elections, has said that seeking peace is his first priority after
decades of conflict in Afghanistan.
The Taliban, which dismissed the Afghan election as a US plot, has
often said they will fight on until all foreign troops have left
Afghanistan.
About 12,500 US-led troops will stay on into next year on a NATO
training and support mission.Karzai also pursued peace talks with the
insurgents, but preliminary efforts collapsed last year.
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