WASHINGTON: The United States has launched a major diplomatic offensive to ensure that recent terrorist attacks in Kabul do not affect relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and urged him to show restraint.

During the weekend, US National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice telephoned Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and conveyed a similar message to him. She also spoke with the Afghan president.

At the State Department, spokesman John Kirby stressed the need for continuing the Pakistan-sponsored Afghan reconciliation talks, hoping that recent terrorist attacks in Kabul would not derail the process.

“We certainly want to see a political reconciliation process move forward. We want to see peace. And recent participation in those reconciliation talks as of a few weeks ago was certainly an encouraging sign,” he said. “We said at the time that it was very early – just beginning; we want to see this progress.”

The recent terrorist attacks, he said, underscored two things – Afghanistan remained a dangerous place and that the Taliban had not renounced the use of violence as a tactic and a terror device.

“We want to see political reconciliation and a safe and prosperous and secure Afghanistan. And again, these attacks underscore that that remains a challenge,” he said.

He refused to speculate on the suggestion that the talks indicated a power-struggle between the moderates and extremists within the Taliban movement.

Mr Kirby noted that soon after his election last year, President Ghani reached out to leaders in Pakistan, and they did have some constructive conversations about the shared challenge in that border region.

He noted that in his statement on Monday, the Afghan president claimed that the threat of terrorism “continues to emanate from Pakistan”.

After President Ghani’s news briefing, Secretary Kerry spoke to President Ghani.

“They talked about this (Mr Ghani’s statement), this issue of the safe havens and of the need for both countries to continue to work at this, to try to eliminate those safe havens,” Mr Kirby said.

Earlier, another State Department official, Helaena W. White, urged Pakistan and Afghanistan to talk directly to one another on the issue of terrorism.

We have raised our concerns on this issue in both Islamabad and Kabul, and asked the respective governments to share whatever information they may have,” she said.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2015

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