The deputy Afghan foreign minister Hekmatyar Khalil Karzai has said Afghanistan is open to hold talks regarding the concerns of Pakistan as efforts are underway to attract the cooperation of the country in the fight against terrorism and regional cooperation.
Karzai has told RFE’s Afghanistan service that Pakistan is still concerned regarding the close relations between Afghanistan and India and has specific demands in this regard.
According Karzai, Pakistan claims that the Afghan and Indian intelligence agencies have close links and India has twelve consulates in Afghanistan.
However, he said such concerns and demands have no basis and are not true and the Afghan side has repeatedly offered negotiations to Pakistan to sideline such concerns.
This comes as the latest round of the bilateral talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan ended without any major breakthrough to establish an environment of cooperation and attract Islamabad’s cooperation.
The Afghan officials said last month that fight against terrorism, reduction in violence, peace efforts were on top of Afghanistan’s agenda in bilateral talks but no breakthrough was made during the negotiations.
Earlier, the officials had said no decision has been made to continue the bilateral talks in the format of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace after the talks did not yield positive results.
