The other members present in Sunday’s meeting were Qureshi, Minister for Planning Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar, Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing and senior officials.
Pakistan Prime Miister Imran Khan (Photo: IANS)
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday met Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi.
The meeting came a day after Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi hosted his Chinese and Afghan counterparts to discuss the Afghan peace efforts, counterterrorism cooperation, and other issues, The Express Tribune reported.
Wang was accompanied by Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Luo Zhaohui.
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The other members present in Sunday’s meeting were Qureshi, Minister for Planning Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar, Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Yao Jing and senior officials.
Saturday’s trilateral dialogue in Islamabad saw Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China agree that there was a need for a “comprehensive” peace deal through “an inclusive Afghan-led and Afghan-owned” reconciliation process, as three sides condemned the recent surge in Taliban-backed terrorist attacks in the war-ravaged country.
In a joint statement issued after the trilateral meeting, there was an emphasis on intra-Afghan dialogue, including direct negotiations between the Afghan government and Taliban, something President Ashraf Ghani’s administration had been demanding for many months.
The dialogue will focus on political relations, Afghanistan peace process, security cooperation and counter-terrorism measures.
The US seeks the Taliban guarantee they will not allow Afghanistan to become a haven from which extremist groups launch global attacks.
On Thursday, US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad returned to Qatar for further talks with the Taliban as he fine-tunes a deal on withdrawing troops, the State Department said.
“Ambassador Khalilzad has returned to Doha to continue talks,” a State Department spokesperson said, signalling that the two sides were working on a possible peace deal.
(With IANS inputs)
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