Reconciliation efforts: No issue in handing over Afghan Taliban

NA body says Pakistan’s aim is to help peace process.

ISLAMABAD:

The head of a parliamentary panel said on Monday that Pakistan should hand over members of the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network to Kabul in an effort to help accelerate the peace process in the war-ravaged country.

"We should not have any problem in handing over the Afghan Taliban or members of Haqqani Network to Afghanistan if this helps the reconciliation process," the chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Foreign Relations Awais Ahmed Khan Laghari told reporters here.

When asked, he made it clear that he had no information whether any Afghan Taliban commanders were in Pakistan's custody.

"If they are in Pakistan, we must deliver them to Kabul because the objective of both the countries is to bring peace [in the region]," he said.

Awais Ahmed’s statement came a day after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani sought stringent action from Islamabad against the insurgent group, which in recent weeks intensified its spring offensive in the war-ravaged country.



In a letter written to the political leadership, Ghani urged the government in Islamabad to place Taliban leaders in Quetta and Peshawar under house arrest and detain members of the Taliban-allied Haqqani Network.

Pakistan has always denied that it is sheltering any Taliban commanders. In an apparent shift in policy, Islamabad in recent weeks publicly condemned the Afghan Taliban for their spring offensive.

Relations between Islamabad and Kabul have vastly improved since the unity government formed in Afghanistan. But the committee chairman cautioned that more needs to be done to remove the trust deficit between the two neighbours.

West’s biased approach

The chairman of the foreign relations body strongly condemned the recent statement given by India’s Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar that his country would “neutralise terrorists through terrorists”.

"Had this statement been made by any Pakistani official, the international community particularly the west would have already moved to the UN Security Council," he said while criticising the role of powerful countries for condoning such anti-Pakistan remarks by the Indian minister.

He admitted that there were little prospects for peace with New Delhi during the tenure of Narendra Modi.

Awais Ahmed also claimed that the Indian spy agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), had penetrated into the security establishment of Afghanistan.

India is creating instability in Pakistan to sabotage the recently signed the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project, he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2015.