Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Tahir Hussain Andrabi said on Sunday that Pakistan welcomed Iran\u2019s offer of mediation between Islamabad and Kabul and would \u201cnot shy away from\u201d it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran is a brotherly, friendly country. Pakistan is always in favour of finding peaceful resolutions of issues through dialogue and diplomacy, and we appreciate the offer of mediation of our brotherly country, Iran,\u201d Andrabi told Dawn upon a query about reports that Tehran was working to convene a regional meeting for mediation between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that Iran can play an important role. We would not shy away from any mediatory role by Iran. Mediations are always welcome,\u201d Andrabi said, adding that Pakistan had a \u201cvery strong case\u201d.<\/p>\n
He further stated: \u201cGenerally, mediations are resented by a country or a side which is on a weak legal or a political case. Pakistan\u2019s case on this issue, on terrorism emanating from Afghanistan, is very strong. So, obviously we will not shy away from mediation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pakistan, which has been grappling with the problem of terrorism for long, has been demanding that the rulers in Kabul take action to stop cross-border terrorism. But, the Afghan Taliban deny Islamabad\u2019s allegation of terrorists being allowed to use Afghan soil to carry out attacks in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a third round of talks between Islamabad and Kabul, which were taking place in Istanbul in the presence of mediators from Turkiye and Qatar, broke down without any agreement, as negotiators failed to bridge deep differences over how to prevent cross-border terrorism. The talks had followed deadly border clashes between the two neighbours in October.<\/p>\n
The border clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan started late on the night of October 11 and continued into the next morning. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said that 23 Pakistani troops were martyred and 200 Taliban and affiliated terrorists were killed when Islamabad responded to aggression by Kabul.<\/p>\n
Afghanistan claimed it carried out the attack as a \u201cretaliatory\u201d measure, accusing Islamabad of conducting air strikes in its territory. For its part, Islamabad did not confirm or deny whether it was behind the strikes, but maintained that Kabul should \u201cstop harbouring the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan on its soil\u201d.<\/p>\n
After the initial skirmish on Oct 11, multiple others took place along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Meanwhile, strikes by Islamabad also targeted Gul Bahadur group camps in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
A ceasefire was then agreed upon on the evening of October 15, and eventually, the two sides came together for dialogue in Doha. After the Doha talks, a temporary ceasefire continued to prevent border hostilities while the two sides committed to reconvene in Istanbul to work on mechanisms for lasting peace and stability between the two countries.<\/p>\n
On October 25, the second round of talks between the two sides began in the Turkish capital. But, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced in a post on X on October 29 that the talks \u201cfailed to bring about any workable solution\u201d. He also asserted that Pakistan would continue to take all possible measures to protect its citizens from terrorism.<\/p>\n
However, mediators Turkiye and Qatar intervened and managed to salvage the dialogue process with an October 31 joint statement released by Turkiye stating that \u201cfurther modalities of the implementation will be discussed and decided\u201d during a principal-level meeting in Istanbul on November 6.<\/p>\n
But on November 7, Defence Minister Khawaja said that talks addressing cross-border terrorism were \u201cover\u201d and \u201centered an indefinite phase\u201d as negotiators failed to bridge deep differences between the two sides.<\/p>\n
Following the failure of the talks, the Afghan Taliban have suspended trade ties with Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Tahir Hussain Andrabi said on Sunday that Pakistan welcomed Iran\u2019s offer of mediation between Islamabad and Kabul and would \u201cnot shy away from\u201d it. \u201cIran is a brotherly, friendly country. Pakistan is always in favour of finding peaceful resolutions of issues through dialogue and diplomacy, and we appreciate the offer of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13469,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13467\/revisions\/13469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}