Taliban’s Islamabad trip not about peace: MoFA

KABUL was aimed at obtaining the release of two US hostages and had nothing to do with the peace process.

Idrees Zaman, deputy foreign minister, told a press conference here that discussions, probably still ongoing, in Islamabad (between the Taliban and Pakistani officials) had no link with the Afghan peace process.

He said any peace talks where the Afghan government was not involved or not consulted would be useless and Taliban’s trips to foreign countries only represented their sporadic activities.

He said Taliban’s trips to the capitals of foreign countries in the past had also not been effective and rather the Afghan people showed even stronger reaction to them.

“Peace is priority for the Afghan government and people who proved it by participating in the September 28 presidential election and Consultative Peace Jirga earlier, “he said.

Zaman stressed that the Taliban should cease violence before starting peace talks and said that peace could not move parallel with violence.

“The government believes that peace will not be ensured in Afghanistan until neighboring countries host and fund extremist groups such as the Taliban who kill Afghan people”, he said.

“We appreciate the efforts of our friendly countries, but we believe peace efforts would be effective only if the Taliban sit with the Afghan government and people face to face and stop fighting before talks,” he said.

Zaman said Afghanistan’s foreign policy was managed by the president and relevant organs in cooperation with each other and MoFA was the only channel for representing that policy.

Pointing to recent remarks of a MoFA spokesman, Zaman termed the statements as personal views of the spokesperson who he said did not represent the position of the ministry.

He called Afghanistan representatives’ speech in the UN as productive and said that peace talks and election were main issues discussed on the sidelines of the summit.

mds/ma