Daily Times

The Pakistan-sponsored three-day Afghanistan conference which was scheduled to be held tomorrow (Saturday) has been postponed following the request of deferment of the summit by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Sources revealed that the Afghanistan conclave has been postponed on the request of Afghan President Ghani.

The three-day summit was to be hosted by Pakistan. President Ghani during his meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan in Tashkent requested to postpone the summit.

Earlier, Prime Minister Imran Khan requested Afghanistan to consider Pakistan as a ‘partner of peace’ rather than blaming it for the ongoing territorial war in Afghanistan, which he said was the ‘outcome of using a military solution by the United States instead of a political one’.

“Blaming Pakistan for what is going on in Afghanistan is extremely unfair…Peace in Afghanistan is our foremost priority,” the prime minister added, in his counter narrative to the speech of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the conference on ‘Central and South Asia Regional Connectivity, challenges and opportunities’ held at Congress Centre.

Rejecting the allegations put forward by President Ghani made against Pakistan for “not supporting peace”, the prime minister clearly stated that Pakistan did not want any unrest in its neighbourhood because peace was in its own interest.

“Mr Ghani, I want to make it clear to you that Pakistan will be the last country to think about supporting turmoil and unrest in Afghanistan,” he said.

“The Afghan Peace Conference scheduled to be held in Islamabad from 17-19 July 2021 has been postponed until after Eid Al-Adha The new dates of the conference will be announced later,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said on Friday.

A while back, President Ghani had himself wished for a conference to be held in Islamabad with an Afghan government delegation as well as Taliban delegation in attendance. “However, the Taliban were not ready for this, and neither did Qatar want peace talks to be shifted from Doha to elsewhere,” sources said.

It was further stated that Pakistan wanted to have first hand informations about the reservations and concerns that the Taliban and other parties of Afghanistan have. With the information in hand, Islamabad wanted to set up a roadmap for peace talks in the future.

Therefore, Pakistani government invited representatives from the Afghanistan government, former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, who leads the High Council for National Reconciliation, and other senior leaders of the country, soruces said.

He went on to say that two days earlier, however, the Afghan government excused themselves from the meeting, while Karzai and Abdullah had neither accepted nor rejected the invitation.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Haji Muhammad Mohaqiq, Dr Omar Zakhilwal, and around 30-40 other leaders had accepted the invitation  and all the preparations to host them were in place.

During President Ashraf Ghani’s meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan today in Uzbekistan, the Afghan leader requested the latter to cancel the conference, as one of their delegations had departed for Doha,” sources reported.