Islamabad sets criteria to judge Kabul

FO spokesperson says Afghan Taliban will be assessed from their action

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan has set certain benchmarks to determine whether the Afghan Taliban government would be taking practical and effective measures to neutralise the threat of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). At a weekly news briefing on Thursday, Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Pakistan had shared evidence with the Afghan interim government about the presence of TTP sanctuaries.

“We have urged the interim Afghan government to take concrete action against these TTP elements, dismantle their networks and prevent terrorist attacks from across the border into Pakistan,” she said. “We also want them to hold the perpetrators and abettors of terrorist incidents inside Pakistan to account. We remain engaged with Afghan authorities with focus on these goals,” she added.

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Responding to a question about reports of a possible action against the TTP by the Afghan Taliban, the spokesperson said such reports must lead to certain “positive results”. “Any positive reports of action against TTP, we hope will result in concrete results, which means that the terrorist incidents in Pakistan perpetrated by TTP elements with hideouts inside Afghanistan will come down and in the end completely eliminated.”

She added during the visit of the acting Afghan minister for Industry and Commerce, the foreign minister demanded concrete action by Afghanistan against terrorist groups particularly the TTP. He also expressed Pakistan's readiness to collaborate with the Interim Afghan Government to this end. The foreign minister reaffirmed Pakistan's commitment to addressing issues between Pakistan and Afghanistan through constructive engagement and dialogue.

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When asked the spokesperson strongly rejected reports that Pakistan was supplying weapons to Ukraine in its ongoing conflict with Russia. “I reaffirm what we have said in the past that Pakistan has not sold weapons to Ukraine or to Russia as we have adopted a policy of strict neutrality in this conflict,” she insisted.

“Secondly, we are not in a position to confirm what weaponry is being used by the parties in the conflict. Thirdly, as I said in the past, Pakistan's exports of weaponry to countries is accompanied by end-user certificates and we expect the parties which import Pakistani weapons to respect those end user commitments,” she added.