ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday said that it wanted to send Taliban and Haqqani network leaders back to Afghanistan to join the mainstream politics in their own country, according to BBC Urdu.
In an interview to the British broadcast network, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Aizaz Chaudhry rejected allegations of providing shelter to Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network operatives. “There are no terrorist safe havens in Pakistan. However, if US has any information [on the issue] then they must share it with us as we too want to eliminate them [Taliban and Haqqanis],” he said.
Chaudhry said the Taliban and Haqqanis had a control over 43 per cent land in Afghanistan. “However, they have relations with the Afghan refugees living in Pakistan and that’s why we want them [refugees] to return to Afghanistan as well,” he said. “Our position on the issue is very clear: we want them back to their country… we don’t want Taliban and Haqqanis living with us. In fact, we are forcing them to go and live in Afghanistan and join the political mainstream there and they’re not accepted here anymore,” he asserted.
The ambassador said that the refugees were becoming a security threat for Pakistan as their youth was being hired by the terrorists. “We want them to go back too so that the border is secured and bad people don’t travel across anymore,” he added.
Commenting over intelligence sharing between Pakistan and the US in the aftermath of recent war of words, the ambassador said the two countries were still in contact at different levels including ‘intelligence sharing at working level’.
“We want the doors of dialogue to remain open including intelligence cooperation which is at working level at the moment and officials are engaging each other,” he said.
He said Pakistan and US shared the common target of bringing peace and stability in Afghanistan. he said Pakistan and Afghanistan would mutually benefit by thorough surveillance of the border.
Days after US President Donald Trump’s tweet slamming Pakistan for ‘not doing enough’ in the fight against terrorism and being nothing but ‘deceitful’ to his country, a top US commander, who is overseeing the campaign in Afghanistan, had reached out to the Pakistani military leadership. The telephone call by General Josph Votel, the Centcom chief, to army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa was meant to deliver a message as to what exactly the Trump administration wanted from Pakistan to help end the 16-year-old conflict in Afghanistan.
Published in Daily Times, January 20th 2018.
