Islam Times - Pakistan PM Khan in Afghanistan for Talks

Islam Times - Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan embarked on a visit to the Afghan capital Kabul for delegation-level talks with President Ashraf Ghani on bilateral ties, the stuttering Afghan peace process and other issues, a Pakistani statement says.

Khan landed in Kabul on Thursday for his first visit to Pakistan’s northwestern neighbor, where it has been facilitating peace talks between the government and the Afghan Taliban.

Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammed Haneef Atmar and Ghani’s special envoy for Pakistan Omar Daudzay received the visiting dignitary at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Al Jazeera reported.

Graan Hewad, spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry, said that the visiting prime minister would share his views with the Afghan leadership about Islamabad’s role in the peace process.

Earlier a Pakistani statement said that the focus of the talks would be “on further deepening the fraternal bilateral relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Afghan peace process, and regional economic development and connectivity”.

Khan is accompanied by Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and his adviser on commerce and investment, Razzaq Dawood.

The Pakistani prime minister’s visit comes at a time of heightened engagement between the two neighbors, with numerous Afghan government officials visiting Pakistan in the preceding months, including Afghan peace chief Abdullah Abdullah, speaker of Afghanistan’s lower house of Parliament Rahman Rahmani and Commerce Minister Nisar Ahmad Ghoraini.

In October, Pakistan also hosted Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hizb-e-Islami, an armed group that laid down weapons in 2016.