KABUL: The European Union Special Envoy for Afghanistan on Thursday said he was “slightly more optimistic” that progress could be made in discussions at a UN-convened meeting on the country this month.

Tomas Niklasson addre­ssed a press conference at the end of a four-day trip to the Afghan capital, during which he met senior Taliban officials ahead of a gathering of special envoys for Afghanistan hosted by the United Nations in Qatar from Feb 18.

A similar meeting was held in Doha in May 2023, with no Afghans invited.

Both Afghan civil society members and the Taliban authorities have been invited to this year’s UN-convened meeting, to be held over two days, but there are still questions on the nature of their participation and the agenda, said Niklasson.

“I don’t want to paint too rosy a picture,” Niklas­son said, adding, however, that he felt “more opti-mistic about the attitude and the interest of the de facto authorities” for progress on obstacles to engagement in the meeting.

“There was a very positive overall assessment and I didn’t hear... any fundamental disagreement with the analysis of the recommendations” of a recent UN independent assessment on Afghanis­tan, which will be key to the discussions.

He said Taliban officials, however, reiterated their resistance to the recommendation that a UN Special Envoy for Afghanistan be appointed.

It is unclear if the appointment of such an envoy would be on the Doha agenda.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2024