ISLAMABAD: Senior Afghan Taliban members held a series of meetings with Pakistani officials this week in Islamabad, mainly to brief them about the recent talks between the Afghan Taliban and Kabul held in Qatar, a senior Taliban official, an Afghan diplomat and a Pakistani official said Saturday.
“The Taliban leaders who visited Pakistan were Mullah Salam Hanifi and Mullah Jan Mohammed, both former ministers in the Taliban government, and Maulvi Shahabuddin Dilawar, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, said a senior Taliban official.
A senior Pakistani security official confirmed the latest meetings between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani authorities, saying Islamabad is playing its role to ensure peace in neighbouring Afghanistan.
“We will keep making efforts to facilitate talks between Kabul and the Taliban, as we did in July 2015, but the world knows who scuttled the peace process at the time and we do not want to discuss those bitter things,” said the official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media on the record on the sensitive issue.
Pakistan arranged the first ever face-to-face talks between Kabul and the Taliban in 2015, but the peace process broke down after the Afghan government announced the death years earlier of the Taliban’s one-eyed founder and leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
