The Beyond Boundaries Pakistan and Afghan PAJC delegations held a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, on Thursday 22 August, at Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
FM Qureshi in a very candid but eloquent conversation with the Afghan delegation gave very positive messaging for the Afghan government, and people of Afghanistan regarding the Afghan Peace Process, Presidential Elections, Border opening 24/7, bilateral and transit trade, visa easement, and importance of such high-level delegations visiting respective countries. He also emphasized on the importance of parliamentary delegation exchanges including delegations of women parliamentarians.
At the outset he welcomed the Afghan delegation saying “I welcome you at a very important time when the peace process is at last stage; let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope for sustainable peace”. It is our shared interest as well as regional interest.
The FM said that Afghanistan is a very important country as a neighbor for us. We have lots of commonalities such as religion, culture, language, food and trade but at the same time we had difficulties including extreme trust deficit in the past. We must bridge this distrust. I want you to know as Foreign Minister and on behalf of Prime Minister Imran Khan, the current Pakistan leadership is very sincere in bridging this gap and improving our relations with Afghanistan. To give you an example, of the importance we give to our relationship, I as Foreign Minister chose Kabul to be my first destination after PTI formed government. To me as Foreign Minister my most important relationship is with Afghanistan; because we are both affected, our people and economies are affected.
The vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan is to have improved and cordial relations with all its neighbors, but particularly to have best relations with Afghanistan. Unfortunately, with India we have had very bad relations right now; we are at dagger’s drawn. We want to have good friendly relations with Afghanistan, we also wanted to have good relationship with India- but it has not reciprocated. Despite our efforts for dialogue and peace we have been rebuffed by India. I must emphasize here that they have also not been friendly towards Afghanistan, at a time when the Peace Process is hopefully coming to a resolution and conclusion, in which the world including many international and regional powers are involved and supporting, the focus has moved to Pak-India tensions. Until we address challenges on the western border we cannot move with vision of Prime Minister.; we cannot translate the agenda of good governance and economic reforms if we are at war with India and Afghanistan.
“Border [with Afghanistan] will not be closed nor trade will stop. Why should Afghans suffer because of the idiosyncratic behavior of Narendra Modi.”
“Let me assure you on my behalf and on the behalf of PM Imran Khan that Pakistan will not stop facilitating the Afghan Peace Process, despite tensions with India, Pakistan is totally focused on the situation and its role in Afghanistan”. Hopefully there will be a peace solution at the end, we support an intra-Afghan solution ultimately for the peace process.
The message for our Afghan delegation from PM Imran Khan is that Pakistan supports an Afghan led and Afghan owned peace process after completion of the Doha talks. Pakistan does not have any favorites in Afghan Presidential Elections; we will be happy and ready to work with any leader who is elected by the people of Afghanistan to further cement and sustain our brotherly relations.
Let us call a spade a spade, and move forward. We accusing you, you accusing us does not work for both of us; we need to change this.
FM Qureshi reiterated his government’s stated policy that the concept of “strategic depth” with reference to Afghanistan is outdated. We want strategic partnership with peace and economic development. We want to improve our trade; our bilateral trade can multiply. We are developing a modern facility at Gwadar. Afghanistan is a land locked country; it can make use of Gwadar port to improve trade.
FM Qureshi told the two delegations that President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to Pakistan was a very productive and good visit. We moved forward on trade, on security, and on other issues. We have a very effective and sustainable mechanism in place APAPPS (Afghan Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity). Under which we have five working groups, everything can be solved under this mechanism. We recently had a bilateral meeting in Islamabad to review this mechanism.
“We believe there should be peace in Afghanistan, peace and stability in Afghanistan is in our interest. As neighbors we have no choice because we are geographically connected with you, we have a long border with you. You do not have a border connecting you to India, but is for you as a sovereign country to choose relations with India. But, please distinguish it on the fact that we are direct neighbors. We both can impact each other. As direct neighbors we have no choice leave but to live together.”
As Prime Minister Imran Khan had been saying for decades now that there is no “military solution” in Afghanistan; even, when he was ridiculed as ‘Talban Khan’. I am educated at Cambridge, our PM is from Oxford, my daughter is studying abroad. Do you think we can ever contemplate a ‘Taliban’ kind of vision for Pakistan, if not how can we have that for Afghanistan? They are your people they are Afghans, but they must respect the international values of human and women rights. If I can send my daughter abroad to study, how can I ever think Afghan girls not being provided with this opportunity.
“We are a democracy, you are a democracy, we would love to engage with you. We should have parliamentary delegation visiting each other. I personally want a women parliamentary team to visit Kabul and talk with women parliamentarians of Afghanistan”.
Dr. Shoaib Suddle, the head of Pakistan delegation thanked the Foreign Minister for meeting: “we were looking forward to your views after President Ghani’s visit and recent positive developments in bilateral relations. He briefed the Foreign Minister on the CRSS led Pak-Afghan track 1.5/II initiative “Beyond Boundaries”, and the PAJC bilateral dialogue held on 21st August at Serena.
Khalid Pashtoon, the head of Afghan delegation said: “we are grateful to you for meeting us, we are very encouraged to hear your views. People in Afghanistan were eager to find out Pakistan’s position. We are to happy to hear you and your government’s point of view for improving bilateral relations by building trust and confidence. We also want to thank you for the role Pakistan is playing in the Afghan peace process.
Pashtoon also highlighted visa issues by stating that people face great difficulties at Pak embassy and consulates in Afghanistan as the number of visa applicants’ is huge as compared to facilities available, hence many times people have to wait in long ques overnight and for long hours. He requested the Foreign Mister that his government should overcome these issues.
FM Qureshi replying to his request said: “let me be very candid, there are but there are also corruption issues not only on our side but on your side as well, you know it better than me; there are mafia kings and warlords in Afghanistan who are involved in this racket”. We are trying to fix the capacity issues by improving facilities and infrastructure, as we have fixed the border issue by opening border for 24 hours.
In his concluding remarks FM Qureshi reiterated what he had said earlier: “we want to live in peace as a ‘friend’ and desire friendly relationship with Afghanistan”. We would love to see Afghanistan with peace and prosperity. Peace in Afghanistan is also vital and important for peace in Pakistan. We would love to have peace and reconciliation process completed successfully, as it is among all Afghans eventually. Peace in Afghanistan can bring huge economic benefits, it can bring huge economic benefits for us too, referring to CASA 1000, TAPI, and the geographic trade routes to CARs (Central Asian Republics); if we have peace, we can have east to west trade gains. We would both gain as nations for the prosperity of our people.
FM Qureshi told the Afghan delegation: “I have most recently invited your Foreign Minister to attend a trilateral FM meeting in September”. The trilateral FMs meeting will be held in Islamabad, with also the Chinese FM invited. We have earlier had trilateral meetings in Beijing.
At the end, both delegation heads Dr. Shoaib Suddle and Khalid Pashtoon thanked the Foreign Minister again, and presented to him the “Joint Declaration of Policy Recommendations” formulated in the Beyond Boundaries bilateral dialogue on 21 August.
