ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: As the Taliban have intensified their insurgent activities in Kabul with the emergency of their new leadership, a high-level Afghan delegation reached Islamabad on Thursday to press the Pakistani leadership for strict action against the Taliban.
In a statement on Thursday, a spokesman for the Afghan president Sayed Zafar Hashemi said that a delegation comprising the Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani, the acting Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai and head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency National Directorate of Security (NDS) Rahmatullah Nabil arrived in Islamabad for talks on “concrete action” against the Taliban.
“The Afghan government wants Pakistan to take action against those groups … (who are) declaring war against Afghan people,” the spokesman said.
During its stay in Islamabad, the Afghan delegation will hold talks with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his advisor on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz.
It follows an allegation made by the NDS against some elements in Pakistan military, saying they were involved in a series of terrorist attacks that struck Kabul last week, causing a number of causalities.
“Special circles of the Pakistani military were behind all those attacks,” the NDS spokesman Hassib Sediqi said on Wednesday.
Earlier on Monday, the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani also criticized Pakistan for providing safe heavens to the Taliban insurgents which infiltrate into Afghanistan and launch attacks there.
However, Pakistan has consistently denied such accusations and said that it remains committed to bring stability and peace in Afghanistan.
Pakistan also hosted the peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban near Islamabad last month. But the dialogue process was halted just a day before the scheduled second round of talks after the announcement of the death of the Taliban Chief Mullah Muhammad Omar.
