Daily Times

Afghan parliament has summoned key ministers and intelligence chief to explain as to why the plane of the Speaker of Pakistani National Assembly Asad Qaiser was not allowed to land at Kabul’s international airport on Thursday.

The four-day official visit of Speaker Asad Qaiser to Afghanistan was postponed due to a “security threat”, Special Representative of Pakistan for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq said in a Tweet.

In a latest development the interior, defence ministers and chief of the National Directorate of Security have been summoned by the parliament to appear on Saturday and been ordered to provide information about the reasons to stop Pakistani plane from landing.

Abdul Tawab Danish, Advisor of the National Assembly on foreign relations, said that the Civil Aviation chief, in-charge of the airport operations and several other officials of the airport have also been summoned. They will be asked as to why Qaiser was coming to Kabul when there was a security threat.

Danish told the BBC Pashto, that foreign forces had not even allowed Afghan forces to visit the site where explosives were destroyed.

Daily Times has learnt that the Speaker National Assembly on Friday discussed the situation with officials including Pakistani ambassador in Kabul Mansoor Khan and all agreed to make the incident an issue of ego, but vowed that the speaker will continue his efforts to promote relations between the two parliaments.

The Afghan Foreign Minister in a statement showed sadness at the incident and said new dates of Mr Qaiser will be decided and he will visit Kabul soon.

Meanwhile, Qaiser said that his Afghan counterpart Mir Rahman Rahmani and Chairman Afghan Senate Muslimyar spoke to him and expressed shock at the postponement of the visit. Qaiser told a private TV in an interview, that he is not upset at the postponement of the visit as he will definitely pay the visit either in Ramadan or after.

The speaker said Rahmani told him that he and the protocol team were at the airport to receive the Pakistani relegation. “The Afghan speaker told me to give new dates for the visit but I suggested that new dates will be decided with consultations,” Qaiser said.

An official statement from a Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan said that during construction at the Hamid Karzai International Airport international airport, a digging crew uncovered unexploded ordinance that appeared to have been buried for some time.

“The explosives were uncovered in an unoccupied area far from any active runway,” he said in a statement that was also sent to Daily Times.

The official said that the Turkish military explosives experts conducted a controlled detonation to render the device safe, adding that flight operations resumed shortly thereafter.

Muhamamd Naeem Salehi, spokesman for Afghanistan civil aviation, told the Afghan media that the airport was closed for an hour and 20 minutes due to technical problems.

He said construction work was underway at a site of the airport that led to cancellation of several flights and the operation was later resumed. He said several foreign and local companies resumed operations and their planes landed