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Pakistan sending emissary to Kabul to resolve 'row' on Doha process

20 July, 2013

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's top foreign affairs official will meet the Afghan president in Kabul tomorrow (Sunday) to discuss stalled efforts to begin talks with the Taliban in Qatar, a senior Pakistani official said on Friday.

The visit by Sartaj Aziz comes after Hamid Karzai's chief of staff claimed the Taliban's office in the Qatari capital Doha was part of a plot to break up Afghanistan, orchestrated by either Pakistan or the United States.

Pakistan's support is seen as vital to achieving lasting peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan. But relations between the two neighbours are rocky, with Kabul regularly accusing Islamabad of supporting the militants.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif kept the foreign affairs portfolio under his own control after winning the May general election, but Aziz, an elder statesman who served as a minister in the 1990s, is effectively the foreign minister.

A senior official told AFP that Aziz would pay a daylong visit to Kabul on Sunday to hold talks with Karzai and other top Afghans.

He said the talks "will primarily focus on ways to promote reconciliation in Afghanistan with reference to the Doha process". "We remain supportive of the reconciliation process in Afghanistan and want an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned mechanism to be in place enabling all Afghan groups to decide about their future," the official said.

When the Taliban opened their office in Doha on June 18, it was hailed as a first step towards a potential peace deal, but a furious Karzai slammed it as an unofficial embassy for a government-in-exile.

The Taliban said earlier this month that the group had temporarily closed the office in Qatar, blaming "broken promises" by the Afghan government and the United States.

Karzai's chief of staff Karim Khorram claimed on Thursday that "the opening of the Qatar office, the way it happened was a plot and Afghanistan foiled that plot and this plot was aimed at splitting or breaking up Afghanistan". Aziz told reporters in Islamabad that he hoped a row over the naming of the office and its use of a flag would be resolved.

Analyst and author Imtiaz Gul said Karzai's rhetoric against Pakistan was an effort by the president to change the perception of him as a US puppet, as he prepares to leave office ahead of elections next year. "This visit basically aims to smoothen the relationship as well as prepare reciprocal visits by Sharif and Karzai," Gul told AFP. "Pakistan looks very uncomfortable at the moment with what seems to be an erratic and desperate Karzai."

Meanwhile, a Foreign Office spokesman in Islamabad said that PM Nawaz had extended an invitation to the Afghan president to visit Pakistan, and that Sartaj Aziz would be carrying the formal invitation for the visit. He said the other objective of the visit was to hold substantive preparations for the Summit-level meeting. "We attach high importance to our bilateral relations with Afghanistan, which would be reviewed during the visit," the spokesman said.

The regional situation and issues of peace and stability would also be discussed during Sartaj Aziz's visit.

End.

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