ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to a mechanism for verification of each other’s actions against terrorist groups.

This was said by the Foreign Office in a statement issued on Saturday about a meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, held a day earlier in Astana, Kazakhstan, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.

“The two leaders agreed to use the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) mechanism as well as bilateral channels to undertake specific actions against terrorist groups and to evolve, through mutual consultations, a mechanism to monitor and verify such actions,” the FO said.

Establishment of a mechanism for verification of an action taken by one side against a group pointed out by the other side as a cause of concern had been a longstanding Afghan demand due to deep-rooted mistrust between the two neighbours.

Sharif, Ghani agree in Astana to revive Quadrilateral Coordination Group

Afghan National Security Adviser Haneef Atmar had said in March that Kabul, while responding to a Pakistani list of 76 wanted terrorists, had handed over its own list of 85 suspected terrorists and told Islamabad, “You act on our list, we will act on your list, but we need to have a third party verification, we are ready to do that, are you?”

It is believed that Prime Minister Sharif and President Ghani, notwithstanding their agreement on a mechanism for verification of counterterrorism actions, did not fully agree on how it would be established.

An Afghan presidential spokesman had a day earlier told media persons that the Afghan government wanted counterterrorism and security issues to be addressed by the currently dysfunctional QCG, which besides Pakistan and Afghanistan includes China and United States and was established last year for promoting peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.

The FO statement, meanwhile, talked about using “bilateral channels” and holding “mutual consultations” for establishing the verification mechanism in addition to benefiting from the QCG process.

Mr Sharif told Mr Ghani that “close cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan is important for eliminating the scourge of terrorism from our region”.

The tense relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan soured further after the May 31 attack in Kabul. Afghan intelligence agency National Directorate of Security blamed the attack on the Haqqani network and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The allegation was strongly rejected by the Pakistan government at all levels.

The FO statement on the Astana meeting said there was also an agreement on revitalising the QCG for promoting peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.

“The prime minister of Pakistan stressed the importance of reconciliation and a politically negotiated settlement as the best solution to the Afghan conflict,” the FO said.

Afghans, however, do not seem to be very interested in this. The QCG has not met since the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a drone strike in a remote area of Balochistan.

APP adds: PM Sharif also held a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Astana. The two agreed to work on proposals for the next session of the Pakistan-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, which would take place in Moscow in December. The strong interest of Russian companies and enterprises in the energy sector of Pakistan was highlighted during the meeting.

The two leaders agreed to fast-track implementation of the North-South Gas Pipeline, the agreement for which was signed in October 2015 between the two countries.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2017