No country has tried harder than Pakistan for lasting peace in Afghanistan
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan rejected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s allegations about Islamabad’s “negative role” in Afghanistan, saying that no country has tried harder than Pakistan for peace in Afghanistan.
He said that it was “unfair” to blame the country for the situation in Afghanistan.
The prime minister’s comments came at the international conference on “Central and South Asia Regional Connectivity: Challenges and Opportunities” during his two-day visit to Uzbekistan. The Afghan president was also present at the conference.
Responding to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s allegations regarding Pakistan’s role in the ongoing Afghan conflict, PM Khan said on Friday such comments disappointed him despite his country’s “positive” role in the Afghan peace process.
“President Ghani, let me just say that the country that will be most affected by turmoil in Afghanistan is Pakistan. Pakistan suffered 70,000 casualties in the last 15 years. The last thing Pakistan wants is more conflict,” the premier said as he stopped reading from his written speech.
PM Imran stated that no country has tried harder than Pakistan to bring the Taliban to the table for dialogue. “We have made every effort, short of taking military action against the Taliban in Pakistan, to get them on the dialogue table and to have a peaceful settlement [in Afghanistan]”, he said adding that “To blame Pakistan for what is going on in Afghanistan is extremely unfair.”
Khan said when over 150,000 US and NATO troops were in Afghanistan that was the right time to ask the Taliban to come to the table.
“When the exit date was given, and the only few thousand American troops left, why would they listen to us, when they [Taliban] are sensing victory,” Khan said, while the US top peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, was listening to him.
“I feel really disappointed that we have been blamed for what is going on in Afghanistan.”