ISLAMABAD: The Afghan foreign minister has opted out of the meeting of the council of ministers of the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) in the wake of rising tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The decision of the foreign minister, Salahuddin Rabbani, comes after the two neighbouring countries have found themselves stuck in a diplomatic face-off with Pakistan closing the Pak-Afghan border and incidents of cross-border shelling on a continuous rise.
The closing of the border had come after a number of attacks all over Pakistan took the lives of at least 100 people and injured three times as many. The two countries have been exchanging blows and the Pakistan government has maintained that the militants responsible for the attacks operate from across the border. Both countries have also swapped lists of militants blamed for attacks in in their respective sovereign land.
In the absence of the foreign minister, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Omar Zakhilwal, represented Kabul in the meeting. It has also been confirmed that Zakhilwal will represent Afghanistan on Wednesday’s summit meeting and that the foreign minister will not be making an appearance.
Simmering tensions between the two countries only escalated after the Afghan foreign office called on their Pakistani counterparts in Kabul to lodge protests over alleged cross-border rocket firing. The closing of the border the two countries share has also been a contentious matter for the Afghans.
Matters only took a turn for the worse after India boycotted the SAARC Summit, which is to be held in Pakistan in November, and Afghanistan followed suit. The move resulted in the summit being delayed.
It is worth mentioning that Afghanistan needs ECO as a forum to engage with other powers in the region in both a bilateral and multinational capacity. The absence of the foreign minister is even more questionable considering that the theme for the summit is Connectivity for Regional Prosperity.
