Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, US seek roadmap to peace

The talks are aimed at restarting the Afghan peace process and eventually ending 14 years of bloodshed fighting the Taliban insurgents.

But a splinter group headed by Mullah Mohammad Rasool Akhund, which rejects Mansour’s authority, has dismissed any talks where a mediating role is played by Pakistan, which observers say holds significant sway among Taliban commanders holed up near its border with Afghanistan, or the United States or China.

The Taliban are expected to keep up the fight even if peace talks get off the ground in order to secure territory and improve their leverage in the negotiations.

“We want talks with the Americans first because we consider them a direct party”, the Taliban official said in a face-to-face interview with the AP.

Representatives of the Taliban insurgents have not been invited to the meeting. Pakistan will be represented by Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry while Afghanistan will be represented by Deputy Foreign Minister Hikmet Karzai, sources in the Foreign Office told Daily Pakistan Global.

Still, there seems little to no chance for early peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

Aziz expressed confidence that the meeting will be able to evolve an efficient procedural framework to provide the basis for smooth functioning of the group.

In a series of attacks that have all raised serious questions over the strength and resilience of Afghan government forces, the Taliban managed to briefly overrun and capture the northern Afghan city of Kunduz in September, while last month the group launched an attack on the strategic district of Sangin, in which it seized and blew up the police headquarters and governor’s compound.

The first ever direct talks between representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban were held in Pakistan in July but the process was scuttled after the death of Mullah Omar was confirmed.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have recently been on the offensive in southern Helmand province bordering Pakistan, threatening key towns, including the capital of Lashkar Gah.

Afghanistan is gripped by violence and insecurity years after the USA and its allies invaded the country in 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror.

Pakistan has consistently denied USA and Afghan allegations that it gives financial or material support to Afghanistan’s Taliban.

The Taliban has stepped up attacks since the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation formally ended their combat mission in Afghanistan a year ago, and the fighters are battling local Afghan security forces on several fronts.

He was confident that the meeting of the Quadrilateral group will have constructive and meaningful deliberations focusing on all relevant issues and charting the way forward keeping sight on their shared goal of achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan through a politically negotiated settlement.