Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad on Tuesday (today) to seek Pakistan’s help for a political solution to the Afghan conflict, officials said on Monday.

The State Department had announced earlier that Khalilzad will be traveling to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belgium, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar with an interagency delegation from December 2-20. Khalilzad held three-day talks with the Taliban political envoys in Qatar last month and more discussions are expected during his upcoming visit to the oil-rich Gulf state. The US special envoy skipped Pakistan in his four-nation trip in November. He had earlier visited Pakistan in October.

The US envoy’s visit to Pakistan has assumed importance after President Donald Trump sought Pakistan’s help in negotiated settlement of the Afghan conflict. A Foreign Office official told Daily Times that Khalilzad is also likely to brief the Pakistani officials about his talks with the Taliban.

The State Department said in a statement that Khalilzad will meet with Afghan government officials and other interested parties to support and facilitate an inclusive peace process in Afghanistan, empowering the Afghan people to decide their nation’s fate. He will be in communication with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and other Afghan stakeholders to coordinate closely on efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table with the Afghan government.

“The United States remains committed to supporting the Afghan people’s desire for peace, and to facilitating a political settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban that ensures Afghanistan never serves as a platform for international terrorism again,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, Taliban spokesman for political office Suhail Shaheen said preliminary meetings with the US officials in Qatar in July, October and November were mainly focused on trust building. “Though, end to invasion and security concerns were raised, a detailed discussion will be held when formals talks are started,” he told Taliban’s Haqiqat magazine. “We have reiterated our demands of opening of the office, scrapping the UN black list and release of the prisoners as confidence building measures,” he said while talking about the Taliban-US talks.

Shaheen was upbeat at the outcome of the Taliban’s participation in the Moscow conference on Afghanistan last month. “The world considers the Islamic Emirate as a political group and wants to listen to our demands and views to end foreign invasion. Russian, Chinese and Iranian delegates at the Moscow conference called for the withdrawal of the foreign troops from Afghanistan and political solution to the problem. It will now be difficult for anyone to defend the invasion of Afghanistan under the excuse of terrorism,” he said.

He said the political office is establishing contacts with countries to explain the necessity of political solution to the problem, adding that those countries which are in contact with the Taliban believe that the US cannot solve the problem militarily and want it to sit with the Taliban. “Those countries would previously call the Islamic Emirate as terrorist group but today they describe the allegations as unrealistic and unjustified and insist that Islamic Emirate is Afghanistan’s important military and political force. Aid agencies now operate through the political office and its affiliated commissions,” he said.

Published in Daily Times, December 4^th 2018.