(The Kabul Times): Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said any reservations Afghanistan has with Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally rather than involving the United States. The foreign minister\u2019s remarks were in reference to part of a joint US-Afghan declaration on peace efforts signed on Saturday by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a ceremony to coincide with the signing in Doha of an agreement between the Taliban and US. \u201cThe United States is committed to facilitating discussions between Afghanistan and Pakistan to work out arrangements to ensure neither country\u2019s security is threatened by actions from the territory of the other side,\u201d one of the clauses of the declaration reads. \u201cThey should talk directly to Pakistan. The US is planning to withdraw, and we will always remain neighbors,\u201d Qureshi said in an interview, referring to Washington\u2019s intent to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. \u201cIf I have an issue with Afghanistan, I will not ask Washington to play a role. You know a trust deficit has existed and Pakistan has done its best to bridge that trust deficit,\u201d Qureshi said, adding that there are institutionalized mechanisms through which Afghanistan can raise any issue under the sun instead of turning to the US.\u201d He said the US-Taliban agreement in Doha would never have happened if Pakistan had not convinced everyone that there was no military solution to the 18-year conflict in Afghanistan. He said Pakistan had facilitated the accord by persuading both the Taliban and the US to find out a political settlement, adding that getting both sides to see this had not been easy. \u201cWe convinced the Taliban to put forward an authoritative delegation that has the capacity to implement what they agree upon, and that wouldn\u2019t have happened without Pakistan\u2019s facilitation,\u201d Qureshi said. \u201cThat was another demonstration of facilitation,\u201d Qureshi said, adding: \u201cYou required someone who enjoyed the confidence of the leadership to engage [with the US] that would make the talks possible. He [Baradar] played a very positive role.\u201d Qureshi said Pakistan played a part in pushing for the negotiation process to restart after US President Donald Trump pulled the plug on negotiations in September last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(The Kabul Times): Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said any reservations Afghanistan has with Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally rather than involving the United States. The foreign minister\u2019s remarks were in reference to part of a joint US-Afghan declaration on peace efforts signed on Saturday by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, US Defense Secretary Mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2849,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2848\/revisions\/2849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}