Peace efforts: Pakistan refused Afghan peace overtures: Ghani

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has blamed Pakistan for not shaking his hand for peace, adding that the Pakistani Taliban pose the gravest threat to the region.

“I went to the (Pakistan Army’s) GHQ (General Headquarters). I invested enormous amount of political capital to make sure the road to peace was the proper road,” Ghani told the audience at the Royal United Services Institute in London on Thursday, the Hindustan Times reported.

Ghani went on to deplore the influx of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from Pakistan owing to a military operation by the army in the tribal areas in areas straddling the border with Afghanistan. “TTP is a displacement phenomenon due to the operations of the Pakistani army. If [TTP leader] Mullah Fazlullah has seven lives, that’s not our fault,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2016.