Pakistan has told the United States that it is ready to facilitate its talks with the Afghan Taliban, but cannot become a guarantor to the negotiating process, a report said Sunday.
According to a private TV channel the report quoted a senior security
official as saying that the Taliban would themselves determine the
propriety or otherwise of sitting at the negotiating table with the
United States.
“Contact with the Haqqani group is there, but they are not in our
pocket,” was the message put across during a crucial meeting between the
two sides on Friday.
“Pakistan must not be blamed in case of failure of attempts ( by
U.S.) for reconciliation with the Taliban as it does not spoon- feed
them,” the official remarked.
He said both sides felt that reconciliation was the way forward, but
the devil lay in the detail. He said Pakistan had raised certain issues
with Hillary Clinton and both sides agreed that more work was needed.
He said Islamabad had made it clear to Washington that the ‘negotiating process must be Afghan-owned and Afghan-led’.
The Taliban must not be pressed to abandon al-Qaida, lay down arms
and declare respect for the Afghan constitution before the talks, the US
was advised. “We know the Afghan culture, they will never lay down
their arms,” he observed.
Pakistan had also spelt out its reservations to the US: it must not
be forced into a strategy that the US itself is not going to follow on
the other side of the border. The unambiguous message given to
Washington was: an action against the Haqqani network in North
Waziristan was not advisable as Pakistan cannot afford to open a new
front at this stage. SANA
