Stranded Afghans get visas extended in Pakistan

KABUL on Friday extended the mandated period of visas to Afghan nationals, days after closing its border at Torkham and Chaman.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan directed the regional passport office in Peshawar to extend visas of Afghan nationals, reported Radio Pakistan.

The minister was quoted in a statement as saying that the step was aimed at facilitating those Afghan citizens who had arrived in Pakistan legally.

Pakistan closed the border at Torkham hours after a suicide bomber killed scores at a popular shrine in Sehwan Sharif. The Chaman border was shut later.

Torkham connects Pakistan to Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and Chaman is located near Spin Boldak in Kandahar.

The closure halted trade supplies to Afghanistan and increased tensions between the two nations in the wake of bloody suicide bombing across Pakistan.

Also on Friday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said his country was a well-wisher of Afghanistan and always desired peace and stability in the neighbouring country.

 “Afghanistan should realise that Pakistan is its well-wisher,” Nawaz Sharif told journalists at a breakfast meeting prior to his departure from Ankara after completing his three-day visit, reported Pakistan Today.

To a question about recent terror incidents in Pakistan, the premier said although many links had been traced back into Afghanistan, Pakistan continued to favour stability of its neighbour. “A peaceful Afghanistan is in the interest of Pakistan and the region,” he added.

Nawaz said the four-lane Peshawar to Jalalabad motorway was 70 per cent complete and feasibility work was underway on Peshawar-Kabul motorway.

“We believe in maintaining good relations with all and we demonstrated this spirit of goodwill with other states and within the country as well,” he said.

PAN Monitor/ma