Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir leaves for Kabul today (Monday) to deliver the prime minister’s special message to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, asking for a larger role for China in the ongoing Afghan reconciliation process.
Bashir will also participate in the Pakistan-United States-Afghanistan trilateral meeting scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday) in the Afghan capital, with US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman and Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Jaweed Ludin representing their countries in the important talks aimed at facilitating the reconciliation process between the Karzai government and the Taliban, backed by Washington.
It will be in the Kabul meeting that the three countries will try to come up with dates for the first-ever meeting of the recently formed “Pak-Afghan Joint Commission” to push forward the Afghanistan reconciliation process. The commission is jointly headed by the Afghan president and Pakistani prime minister. Grossman and Ludin had also participated in the previous trilateral meeting along with Bashir held here a day after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a covert US operation on May 2.
A brief statement from Prime Minister’s House issued here on Sunday mentioned the foreign secretary’s visit to Kabul carrying a message for the Afghan president from Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, but did not give details about the content of the message. Nonetheless, an official here requesting anonymity said the prime minister, who was in China recently and discussed the issue of Afghanistan, particularly the peace talks involving Kabul and the Taliban, with Chinese leaders, was seeking a larger role for China in the Afghan reconciliation process.
“Pakistan feels that China being one of the most important world nations and regional powers can play a vital role in the success of the peace dialogue in Afghanistan, and its position as a guarantor on the table of negotiations along with the United States will be very helpful for the success of the reconciliation process,” the official said. He said another important issue raised in the prime minister’s message was that Pakistan must have an important role in negotiations as one of the major facilitating states, owing to its long association with Afghanistan during which it faced the devastating consequences of decades of war there along with the Afghan people.
He said apart from meeting President Karzai, Bashir would also meet former Afghan president Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani during his stay in Kabul, who heads the High Peace Council of Afghanistan, a body formed by Kabul to hold peace talks with the Mullah Omar-led Taliban.
