Dr Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, while participating in the annual debate in the General Assembly on the situation in Afghanistan, said that neither side in the conflict could impose a military solution on each other and called for a negotiated end to the war.
“Neither the Coalition and Kabul, nor the Afghan Taliban, can impose a military solution on each other,” Dr Lodhi told the 193 member UN body. Arguing against the continuing resort to military force in Afghanistan, she said that “sixteen years of war, waged by the world’s most powerful forces, have not secured a military solution”.
“The promotion of a political settlement and the pursuit of a military solution in Afghanistan are mutually incompatible,” Lodhi said and added that another resort to the military option without an accompanying political strategy would not produce a result different from the past”.
The Pakistani envoy said her country had consistently proposed a political settlement as the most viable course to end the decades of conflict and suffering in Afghanistan.
In her address to the UNGA, Ambassador Lodhi also called on the Afghan Taliban to abandon violence and come to the negotiating table to engage in a serious dialogue for peace.
Published in Daily Times, November 22nd 2017.
