Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) for Information and Broadcasting Firdous Ashiq Awan on Friday categorically refuted reports of a meeting between Prime Minister Imran Khan and the visiting delegation of the Afghan Taliban.
A Doha-based Taliban Political Commission (TPC) delegation is in Islamabad on the invitation of the Pakistani government for a discussion on the prospects of resumption of stalled peace talks between the United States and the Taliban.
On Thursday, the visiting delegation of the TPC, led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, had called on Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and other senior officials, including the Inter-Services Intelligence chief.
Firdous on Friday said, “The dialogue with the TPC delegation at the Foreign Office (FO) … is a good omen for the [Afghan] reconciliation process.”
“The meeting is proof that Pakistan has always played a crucial role in creating a positive environment for regional and international peace,” she said in a tweet.
She said that Thursday’s meeting between the foreign minister and the Taliban delegation was held to promote peace in the region and expressed hope that the meeting would produce positive results in the near future.
She also stated that, “The Taliban delegation didn’t call on the prime minister. All news published and aired in this regard are baseless.”
After the meeting between the Taliban delegation and the foreign minister, there were rumours that the delegation also met Prime Minister Imran Khan, but a press officer at the Prime Minister’s Office had denied that any such meeting took place on Thursday.
Pakistan has been pushing for the resumption of the engagement between the US and Taliban, which had gone off the rails after President Donald Trump’s September 7 tweet in which he had announced ending talks with the insurgent group and the cancellation of a planned meeting with Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at Camp David because of the death of a US soldier in an attack in Kabul.
The US and the Taliban were at the time closest to signing a deal for ending the conflict that is now in its second decade.
Imran, in his meetings with President Trump and Ambassador Khalilzad on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, had tried to persuade them to return to the dialogue table so that the progress made towards peace was not lost.
Separately, Firdous Ashiq Awan slammed JUI-F President Maulana Fazlur Rehman, saying that he was merely pursuing self-interest.
She also said that the JUI-F leader had vast experience on matters pertaining to Kashmir, and his insistence to “lock down the capital of Pakistan while Kashmir burns” showed his nefarious motives.
“Those telling you that they are with you are actually trying to make you a scapegoat for their own personal and political gains,” she said, adding, “We will not let innocent children studying in the seminaries be exploited for an individual’s political gains. Those looking to raid Islamabad should focus on raiding the Line of Control (LoC).”
