ISLAMABAD, Nov 28: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will visit Kabul on Saturday to meet President Hamid Karzai as part of efforts to revive Afghanistan’s faltering peace process.

The one-day visit comes a week after Mr Sharif met a delegation from the Afghan High Peace Council, which is tasked with opening negotiations with the Taliban as Nato forces withdraw from the country by the end of 2014.

Mr Karzai is stalling on signing a security pact with Washington that would allow a contingent of US troops to stay on for training and counter-terrorism missions.

Support from Pakistan is seen as crucial to peace after Nato troops depart, but relations between the two nations have been uneasy.

Pakistan said it had released former Taliban number two Mullah Baradar – seen by Kabul as important to bringing the militants to the negotiating table – to help the peace process.

But militant sources have complained he is effectively still behind bars.

There has been no confirmation that the High Peace Council was able to meet him during its visit to Pakistan last week.

It will be Mr Sharif’s first visit to Afghanistan since he took office in June.

“He will meet…President Karzai and will discuss issues of mutual interest. Both the leaders will discuss the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry.

The Taliban have refused to have direct contact with Mr Karzai or with the High Peace Council, dismissing them as puppets of the United States.

A Taliban office in Qatar that opened in June was meant to lead to talks, but instead it enraged Mr Karzai after it was styled as an embassy for a government-in-exile.

Mr Karzai and Mr Sharif met British Prime Minister David Cameron in London last month in the fourth of a series of trilateral meetings designed to foster stability in the region.

The meeting was considerably more low-key than one hosted by Mr Cameron at his official country retreat in February, which ended with grand promises of a peace deal within six months.—AFP