{"id":3558,"date":"2016-01-11T19:11:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T19:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=3558"},"modified":"2016-05-22T07:37:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T07:37:06","slug":"afghanistan-china-pakistan-and-us-discuss-afghan-peace-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/afghanistan-china-pakistan-and-us-discuss-afghan-peace-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and US discuss Afghan Peace Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

A four-nation meeting in Islamabad discussed the possibility of a return to talks with the Afghan Taliban.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Delegates and envoys from Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the United States held a meeting in\u00a0Islamabad on\u00a0the situation in\u00a0Afghanistan on\u00a0Monday.<\/p>\n

The Afghan peace process took a step forward as the four countries discussed roadmap for restarting peace negotiations between the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan national government<\/p>\n

China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States, makes up the Quadrilateral Coordination Group.\u00a0The delegations were led by Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai, Pakistan\u2019s Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard G. Olson and China\u2019s Special Envoy for Afghanistan Ambassador Deng Xijun.<\/p>\n

Building on the outcome of December 9 trilateral and quadrilateral meetings at\u00a0Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad, the Group considered mutual efforts to facilitate an Afghan-led<\/a><\/span> and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process with a view to achieving lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan and the region.<\/p>\n

All four countries underscored the importance of brining an end to the conflict in Afghanistan that continues to inflict senseless violence on the Afghan people and also breeds insecurity throughout the region. The participants emphasized<\/a><\/span> the immediate need for direct talks between representatives of the Government of Afghanistan and representatives from Taliban groups in a peace process that aims to preserve Afghanistan\u2019s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity.<\/p>\n

The Pakistani prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, said the primary goal should be to convince the Taliban to come to the table and consider giving up violence.\u00a0“It is therefore important that preconditions are not attached to the start of the negotiation process. This, we argue, will be counterproductive,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The threat of use of military action against irreconcilables cannot precede the offer of talks to all the groups.”<\/p>\n

China\u2019s inclusions in the talks on Monday signals its growing involvement in the Afghan peace process.\u00a0Hong Lei, a spokesperson for China\u2019s Foreign Ministry, said in a regular press conference on Monday that \u201cChina supports \u2018the Afghan-led, Afghan-own[ed]\u2019 reconciliation process, and stands ready to play a constructive role to that end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the premise of respecting Afghanistan\u2019s sovereignty and the will of all sides, China will work with all parties to support and help relaunch peace talks inside Afghanistan,\u201d Hong added.<\/p>\n

Last year was one of the bloodiest on record in Afghanistan, following the withdrawal of most foreign troops at the end of 2014.\u00a0The situation in\u00a0Afghanistan has worsened in\u00a0recent months, with\u00a0the Taliban and other extremist organizations taking advantage of\u00a0instability in\u00a0the country to\u00a0carry out\u00a0attacks against\u00a0major cities in\u00a0the country.<\/p>\n

Senior members of the movement said last week that Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s faction had shown signs of warming to the idea, and other groups were considering it.<\/p>\n

But a splinter group headed by Mullah Mohammad Rasool Akhund, which rejects Mansour’s authority, has dismissed any talks under the mediation of the United States or Pakistan or China.<\/p>\n

\"Afghan<\/a><\/p>\n

The Taliban has redoubled its operations in\u00a0Afghanistan after\u00a0NATO ended its military mission in\u00a0the country in\u00a0late 2014, shifting to\u00a0a non-combat operation instead.<\/p>\n

The Quadrilateral Coordination Group will hold another meeting on January 18<\/a> in Kabul, to continue \u201cdiscussions on a roadmap\u201d to an eventual peace process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A four-nation meeting in Islamabad discussed the possibility of a return to talks with the Afghan Taliban. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[124,1,125],"tags":[9,137,45,204,8,49,10,7],"class_list":["post-3558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-news","category-united-states","tag-afghanistan","tag-asia","tag-china","tag-crisis","tag-pakistan","tag-peace","tag-taliban","tag-u-s"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Afghanistan-Pakistan-China-and-US.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-Vo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3560,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3558\/revisions\/3560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}