{"id":14282,"date":"2023-05-06T05:37:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-06T05:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=14282"},"modified":"2023-05-06T07:25:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-06T07:25:16","slug":"muttaqi-in-pakistan-for-a-trilateral-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2023\/05\/muttaqi-in-pakistan-for-a-trilateral-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Muttaqi in Pakistan for a trilateral conference"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MONITORING (SW) – Pa<\/strong>kistan has hosted a day-long trilateral dialogue with China and Afghanistan in Islamabad after the arrival of the Chinese and Afghan foreign ministers, Qin Gang and Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n

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In addition to attending the fifth round of the trilateral dialogue between the three countries on Saturday, the two foreign ministers will also participate in bilateral discussions with their Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.<\/p>\n

Muttaqi, Afghanistan\u2019s interim foreign minister, was granted a\u00a0travel ban exemption by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) earlier this month allowing him to travel to Pakistan. He has long been subjected to a travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo under UNSC sanctions, reported al-Jazeera.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe government of Afghanistan wants to hold comprehensive talks on bilateral political-commercial relations, regional stability and transit between Afghanistan and Pakistan,\u201d Ziad Ahmad Takkal, deputy spokesperson of the Afghan foreign ministry, said on Friday.<\/p>\n

While this will be the Chinese foreign minister\u2019s first visit to Pakistan, Muttaqi last travelled to Pakistan in November 2021, just a few months after the Afghan Taliban took control in Kabul.<\/p>\n

The visit to Pakistan by the Afghan minister comes in the same week the UN hosted a\u00a0conference on Afghanistan\u00a0in Doha, Qatar, without inviting the country\u2019s Taliban rulers.<\/p>\n

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In this photo provided by the Afghanistan Embassy in Pakistan, the Taliban-appointed Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi, centre, walks with other officials on his arrival in Islamabad, Pakistan, on May 5, 2023 [Afghanistan Embassy in Pakistan via AP]<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Addressing the Doha conference on May 2, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Taliban\u2019s suppression of women\u2019s rights in Afghanistan, including the ban on education.\u201cLet me be crystal clear, we will never be silent in the face of unprecedented systemic attacks on women\u2019s and girls\u2019 rights. We\u2019ll always speak out when millions of women and girls are being silenced and erased from sight,\u201d Guterres said.<\/p>\n

The UN chief was categorical that the Taliban would not be recognised as the rulers of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe meeting was about developing a common international approach, not about recognition of the de facto Taliban authorities,\u201d Guterres told reporters in Doha.<\/p>\n

Pakistan maintains close ties with its northwestern neighbour. The two countries share a 2,600 km-long (1,660 miles) border, also known as the Durand Line. However, Muttaqi\u2019s visit comes at a time when Pakistan has seen a dramatic\u00a0increase in violent attacks\u00a0in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southwestern province of Balochistan, both of which border Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Authorities in Pakistan allege the attacks are launched from within Afghan territory by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an armed group ideologically aligned with the Afghan Taliban. However, despite the exchange of terse words between the authorities of both countries, Pakistan has continued to hold talks with the Afghan Taliban without officially recognising them as the country\u2019s lawful government.<\/p>\n

\u2018Positive progress\u2019<\/h2>\n

In his address to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in India on Friday, Pakistan\u2019s Foreign Minister\u00a0Bhutto-Zardari urged\u00a0the international community to \u201cmeaningfully engage\u201d with the interim Afghan government.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter being the playground for great powers, time and time again, we owe it to the people of Afghanistan to not repeat the mistakes of the past,\u201d he said in the speech in the Indian city of Goa.<\/p>\n

Abdul Syed, an expert on Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Muttaqi\u2019s visit to Islamabad was an important development in relations between the two countries, particularly in light of recent tensions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter TTP\u2019s repeated attacks in the last few months and the Police Line [an area in the city where important government installations are located] bombing in Peshawar in January this year, Pakistan raised objections with the Afghan government. But they were given brusque responses from Muttaqi. So, for him to make this visit now can be seen as a softening of stance and positive progress,\u201d the Sweden-based Syed told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

China, the third participant in the dialogue, also has significant interests in the other two countries.<\/p>\n

Beijing is Pakistan\u2019s key\u00a0economic and defence partner\u00a0and has invested heavily in Pakistan, headlining with $60bn in the ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project. However, multiple attacks by armed groups have targeted Chinese nationals and their interests in Pakistan in recent years.<\/p>\n

China has asked Pakistan to ensure the safety of its citizens and their investments.<\/p>\n

Chinese companies are also investing in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0Chinese firm signed\u00a0a multimillion-dollar investment contract in January this year, the first significant foreign investment in the country since August 2021 when the Taliban took over.<\/p>\n

In March 2022, then-Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi also made a surprise visit to Kabul where he met the Taliban leaders \u201cto discuss various issues, including the extension of political relations, economic, and transit cooperation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some observers believe that the Chinese involvement in Afghanistan is more to do with security concerns than economic interests.<\/p>\n

Aamer Raza, an assistant professor of political science at Peshawar University, told Al Jazeera that the foremost Chinese concern in Afghanistan is minimising the threat posed by the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which is the reason Beijing continues to engage with the Afghan Taliban.<\/p>\n

ETIM is an al-Qaeda-affiliated armed group that has conducted attacks on China in its pursuit of the creation of \u201cEast Turkistan\u201d on the Chinese mainland.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina has maintained its diplomatic presence\u2026 with the Afghan contact group and other multilateral forums under the SCO and beyond, which means the Chinese are well placed to at least mitigate immediate security threats,\u201d Raza told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the UN conference in Doha, which excluded the Taliban, Raza believes non-engagement with Afghanistan\u2019s leadership is unproductive.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of what the UN have done, there is a need to socialise the Taliban into the international norms without extending them full diplomatic recognition. In the absence of domestic opposition and sufficient regional support, the policy of non-engagement will hardly have the desired impacts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Syed said that despite the security concerns and testy exchanges of words, Pakistan and Afghanistan need each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a political necessity for Islamabad to maintain ties with Kabul, considering the Afghan Taliban are trying to improve relations with other regional countries and Pakistan cannot afford to ignore them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimilarly, though, the Afghan Taliban too realise that despite any diplomatic progress they make in the region, it is imperative upon them to maintain cordial ties with Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

ENDS<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MONITORING (SW) – Pakistan has hosted a day-long trilateral dialogue with China and Afghanistan in Islamabad after the arrival of the Chinese and Afghan foreign ministers, Qin Gang and Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi. In addition to attending the fifth round of the trilateral dialogue between the three countries on Saturday, the two foreign ministers will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,978],"tags":[177,596,700],"class_list":["post-14282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-security","tag-pakistan","tag-china","tag-muttaqi"],"views":83,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14282"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14286,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14282\/revisions\/14286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}