Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, says that during his most recent visit to Kabul, Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi informed him that a number of members of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had been arrested.
Dar said this was not enough and that the Taliban must either move TTP members away from the shared border or hand them over to Pakistan.
Dar stressed that his country does not, under any circumstances, want Afghan soil to be used against Pakistan’s security. He said Pakistan had proposed that the Afghan side either relocate Pakistani Taliban fighters away from the frontier or surrender them to Islamabad.
He added that he had recently travelled to several countries, including Bahrain, Russia and Belgium, and during official meetings with senior officials in those countries, he had rejected the information they had received regarding the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as inaccurate, and conveyed to them the realities of both countries. According to him, this new information had been accepted by the European Union and other countries.
The Pakistani foreign minister also urged the Taliban to rethink their governance policies, saying the Taliban’s governing structure consists of two parts: one half that favours peace and another that opposes it.
He added Pakistan can resolve the Afghanistan issue by force, but they do not want to enter “our brothers’ home and kill them”.
The recent deterioration in relations between the Taliban and the Pakistani government has led both sides to exchange increasingly sharp statements.
