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US envoy James Dobbins arrived in Islamabad yesterday for talks with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and other senior officials on efforts to open peace talks with Afghan Taliban, the premier’s office said.
Dobbins, who flew in from Kabul, met Sharif and briefed him on developments relating to Afghanistan, prime minister’s office said in a statement.
“The Prime Minister conveyed to Ambassador Dobbins that Pakistan had the highest stakes in the return of peace and stability to Afghanistan,” it said.
“He assured Mr Dobbins of Pakistan’s full commitment to an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process and highlighted various steps Pakistan had taken in the regard,” it said.
“Noting that the situation in Afghanistan had reached a crucial phase as the US proceeds with its drawdown, the Prime Minister stressed the need for Pakistan and the United States to remain closely engaged.”
Other Pakistani officials said the meetings of Dobbins, the US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, will focus on “efforts to promote an Afghan-led reconciliation process”.
The Afghan Taliban opened an office in Qatar last Tuesday in a step towards talks as the US-led Nato combat mission prepares to leave Afghanistan in 2014 despite a resilient Taliban insurgency 12 years after they were ousted following the 9/11 attacks.
But Afghan President Hamid Karzai reacted furiously to the office being styled as a Taliban government-in-exile under the rebels’ white flag and using the formal name of the “Islamic Emirate Of Afghanistan” from their hardline 1996-2001 regime.
In Kabul on Monday, Dobbins said Washington had been “outraged” at the manner in which the Taliban opened the office, saying it was “inconsistent” with assurances the US had given and received.
Dobbins, who also met the two ranking members of the Afghan body created in 2010 to broker peace with the Taliban, the High Peace Council, described his meeting with Karzai as “positive”.
“We reviewed where we are on the reconciliation front - (which is) basically waiting to see if the Taliban want to talk,” he said.
When asked if the Taliban were committed to participating in the peace talks, Dobbins said it remained unclear. “I genuinely don’t know. We’re waiting to hear,” he said.
“Clearly they were serious enough to get to the point we are (at). We’ve been talking off and on, directly for a number of months, and indirectly for a year and a half,” he said.
“So it doesn’t seem like an entirely spurious effort on their part. But whether they’re prepared to participate under what we thought were the agreed arrangements, I don’t know - we’ll have to wait and see.”
Dobbins’s remarks came just hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference in India that conditions for talks with the Taliban had not been met yet.
Some experts have suggested that Pakistan likely played a key role in persuading a reluctant Taliban to consider tentative peace talks with its American and Afghan government foes.