KABUL: National Assembly (NA) Speaker Ayaz Sadiq on Sunday, clarifying Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s ‘rejection’ last week of an invitation to visit Pakistan, said Ghani had assured him he would visit Islamabad after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pays a visit to Afghanistan.
Speaking to the media on Sunday, Sadiq, who recently led a parliamentary delegation during a visit to Kabul, explained that the Afghan president had not declined invitations extended to him by top Pakistani officials, as Ghani’s Deputy Spokesperson Dawa Khan Minapal had said last week.
Minapal claimed that Ghani, after meetings with Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Naveed Mukhtar and Sadiq, had rejected their invitations, saying he would not visit Pakistan until Islamabad hands over the perpetrators of terror attacks in Afghanistan.
“I will not go to Pakistan till the perpetrators behind the attacks in Mazar-i-Sharif, the American University in Kabul and the Kandahar attacks are handed over to Afghan authorities and until Islamabad takes concrete action against Afghan Taliban militants on Pakistani soil,” Minapal had quoted Ghani as saying.
Sadiq, however, claimed that Ghani assured the speaker he would visit Pakistan once Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif paid a reciprocal visit to Afghanistan. The Afghan president last paid an official visit to Pakistan in Dec 2015 for the Heart of Asia moot.
The speaker said that he had invited the Afghan president to Islamabad so that relations between the two countries may improve.
“It is his [Ghani’s] desire as well that relations improve and peace is established,” Sadiq added.
Sadiq told the media that during his meeting in Kabul, the Afghan president told him that 50 per cent of Afghan land is not under his control.
Ghani said members of the militant Islamic State group and the Afghan Taliban were present “just a few kilometres” away from where the meetings were held between the speaker and the Afghan president, Sadiq told the media.
Sadiq told the media that former Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah will be visiting Pakistan soon.
“When [Afghanistan’s] parliamentary delegation comes we will talk to them about our soldiers being attacked [in Chaman],” Sadiq added.
Earlier this week, at least nine people were killed and over 40 others injured as Afghan border forces opened fire on security personnel guarding a census team in Balochistan’s Chaman area.
Sadiq said that Pakistan has started fencing its borders and over 1,000 posts have been established. He urged Afghanistan to co-operate so as to improve border security.
The speaker said that once border fencing was complete, neither side would have any complaints.
