ISLAMABAD – Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul will arrive in Islamabad on a two-day visit today to devise an agenda for the forthcoming US-Pak-Afghan meeting in Washington next month to increase counter-terrorism cooperation.
The trilateral meeting to be held in February in Washington would be attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her counterparts from Islamabad and Kabul.
“The Afghan foreign minister is coming to Pakistan to chalk out an agenda for that important meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi with focus on narrowing down differences between Islamabad and Kabul regarding the counter-terrorism strategy,” a senior Pakistani official said on Wednesday.
He said the Afghan foreign minister would also meet President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani. He said Pakistan wanted a meaningful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban when it came to the ongoing reconciliation process in Afghanistan but the US had not yet come up with any clear position on the issue, which Islamabad believed was vital for the success of the entire exercise of peace talks.
“The reconciliation process launched by the Karzai administration with the Taliban needs to be fully backed by the US. The Afghan government needs to make it clear to the US administration that without it any peace talks are of no use,” he said. According to the official, Rassoul is also likely to repeat Kabul’s request for Pakistan’s help for the success of peace talks with the Taliban as was done by Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of High Council for Peace in Afghanistan, who recently visited Islamabad.
Importantly, Rassoul’s visit takes place in the wake of Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir’s recent visit to Kabul during which he met Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan foreign minister and Professor Rabbani.
