WASHINGTON: The Pakistani government and the military both saw the Taliban as an existential threat to their state and were committed to dealing with it, the commander of US and international forces in Afghanistan informed Congress on Wednesday.

Gen Joseph Dunford also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was committed to talks with the Taliban but it’s not clear if conditions were right for a constructive engagement with the TTP.

At a hearing on the current situation in Afghanistan, Gen Dunford said the US military could wait till August for a bilateral security agreement with Kabul after which it would start preparing for a withdrawal from that country, if a pact was not signed.

During the hearing, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked the general to explain how the situation in Pakistan could affect what happens in Afghanistan.

“I find it difficult to envision success in the region without cooperation of Pakistan and without an effective relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Gen Dunford said.

“I believe that Pakistan also recognises the existential threat of extremism to their own security, and they also recognise that it’s not in their best interest to have anything other than a stable, secure and unified Afghanistan.”

He noted that since August, Pakistani and Afghan rulers had met four times, indicating that Prime Minister Sharif had “come to a new resolve” to improve the relationship with the neighbouring country.

This cooperation focused on two areas: to have a common definition of extremism and cooperate on dealing with it and to come up with a broader border management framework that would address the political, economic and security issues between the two countries, he added.

“Our role is to work on developing a constructive military-to-military relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Gen Dunford said that recently he had met Pakistan’s new Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif who “indicated a strong resolve to improve the relationship between the Afghan security forces and the Pakistani army as had his Afghan counterparts, and we’ll spend a lot of time over the next several months doing that.”

One of the things the US wanted to accomplish by the end of the year is to have a constructive bilateral relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said.

“And can you speak on efforts to engage in talks with the Taliban on the part of Pakistan?” Senator Shaheen asked.

“Senator, we’re watching that very carefully. To be honest, we don’t have any insight into exactly the status of those discussions. What we have seen recently is continued violence by the TTP,” Gen Dunford said.

“We’ve also seen some limited military operations, particularly in the North Waziristan area against the TTP. But what we know is... that Prime Minister Sharif and the leadership in Pakistan are committed to try to find some peaceful resolution.”

This was what both Afghanistan and Pakistan need to seek in the long term but “it’s just not clear to me today if the conditions are set for constructive peace talks between the TTP and the government of Pakistan”, said the general. “But it’s clear that they’re working to that end.”

This marks the first time that a senior US official has commented on the talks with the TTP.