Pakistan assured visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday that it would promote efforts to reach a peace deal in Afghanistan before NATO’s planned withdrawal.
Cameron is the first foreign government leader to visit Islamabad since Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took office last month after winning landmark elections in May.
Relations between Kabul and Islamabad are traditionally mired in distrust. The apparent headway made at a summit hosted by Cameron in February has since unraveled in a series of public rows.
Photo: EPA
Cameron flew to Pakistan from Afghanistan, where he joined an international push to revive peace efforts that recently collapsed in ignominy after the insurgents opened an office in the Qatari capital Doha.
“We hope that the UK will continue these efforts to seek sustainable peace and stability in Afghanistan,” Sharif told reporters after talks with Cameron.
He supported Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s position that any peace process should be “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led.”
“I have assured Prime Minister Cameron of our firm resolve to promote the shared objective of a peaceful and stable Afghanistan, to which the 3 million Afghan refugees currently living in Pakistan can return with honor and dignity,” Sharif said.
Cameron welcomed Sharif’s remarks about the “vital importance of the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
“I profoundly believe that a stable, prosperous, peaceful, democratic Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s interest, just as a strong, stable, peaceful, prosperous, democratic Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s interest, and I know that you and President Karzai will work together towards those ends,” Cameron said.
The search for a peace deal is an urgent priority as 100,000 US-led NATO combat troops prepare to withdraw next year.
Cameron flew into Kabul on Saturday to try to inject momentum into stalled peace talks, but left empty-handed after Karzai said his country could break up if a deal was done with the Taliban.
Cameron has cast himself as an honest broker able to use Britain’s relations with Pakistan to get the Taliban to talk peace.
Speaking at a joint news conference in Kabul after a visit to British troops in the southern province of Helmand, he said the moment to pursue peace had come.
“There is a window of opportunity and I would urge all those who renounce violence, who respect the constitution, who want to have a voice in the future prosperity of this country to seize it,” he said.
His comments came barely a week after the US revealed the Taliban were to open a long-anticipated office in Qatar, making a meeting with the Afghan state and the Taliban a possibility. Those talks collapsed within days after Karzai objected to the manner in which the office was opened, however, and Taliban militants later attacked central Kabul.
On Saturday, Karzai said he hoped peace talks could begin as soon as possible. However, he complained about foreign peace plans, sounded a defiant note against the US and warned of the dangers of doing a deal with the Taliban.
He also made it clear he was skeptical of Pakistan’s motives in the peace process.
“Any system that is imposed on us ... the Afghan people will reject,” Karzai told a news conference inside his palace. “Delivering a province or two to the Taliban will be seen by the Afghan people as an invasion of Afghanistan, as an effort from outside to weaken and splinter this country.”
A British source told Reuters Karzai remained “furious” about the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar replete with its own flag and plaque, symbols that he felt accorded the Taliban a degree of global legitimacy.
In other developments, a car bomb aimed at a Pakistani security force convoy killed 15 people and wounded 25 others yesterday on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, an official said.
The attack happened not far from the semi-autonomous tribal belt where Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked groups have bases.
“Now 15 people have died,” said Jamil Shah, spokesman for Lady Reading Hospital, a government-run in Peshawar.
At least three children were among the dead, and two children and a woman were among more than 20 injured, he added.
Javed Khan, a local official, told reporters that one policeman was also among the dead in the attack at Badaber, a flashpoint for violence south of Peshawar.
“This is a very sad incident. There have been targeted operations in that area in the last few days and we have arrested many terrorists from that area,” Khan said.
Shops and cars were damaged in the attack. Pieces of human flesh, broken glass, lost shoes and vegetables from nearby carts were flung across the scene, and the seats of damaged cars were stained with blood.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone from the paramilitary Frontier Corps, the target of the attack, had been killed.
“So far, we have reports that two Frontier Corps soldiers have been injured,” a military official said on condition of anonymity.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in