Pakistan ready to host next round of Afghan peace talks, says Lodhi

NEW YORK: Pakistan's Permanent Representative to United Nations (UN) Dr Maleeha Lodhi said on Thursday that Pakistan is ready to host another round of Afghan peace talks, “But we would like to see the anti-Pakistan rhetoric from Kabul to cease.”

Talking to media, Dr Lodhi however clarified that Afghan government should formally request Pakistan to facilitate the second round of talks between Taliban rebels and government.

She said that for negotiated peace, Pakistan has offered its assistance but Afghan government should make a request to Pakistan to revive and renew the peace process so that an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process can get under way and, “over time we can see a return to peace to people of Afghanistan”.

The people of Afghanistan have suffered a lot due to foreign invasion, conflict and internal civil war, that is why they deserved a better future, she remarked.

Dr Lodhi said the point she had made at the UNGA was that there were two parts to Afghan peace; one is imposition of military solution and the other is negotiated peace.

Military solution, she said, had proved to be elusive in the past and it would prove elusive in the future too.

“The international consensus today is in favour of the negotiated peace,” she added.

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Pakistan had hosted a meeting was hosted between the Afghan Government and Afghan Taliban representatives in Murree on 7 July 2015 along with the representatives from China and USA.

The participants were duly mandated by their respective leadership and expressed their collective desire to bring peace to Afghanistan and the region.

The second round of the talks, which was scheduled to be held in Pakistan on 31 July 2015 was postponed in view of the reports regarding the death of Mulla Omar and the leadership crisis among Taliban.