Prime Minister Imran Khan pressed US President Donald Trump yesterday to restart talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban and said that Washington has a “duty” to calm the Kashmir stand-off with India.
“Stability in Afghanistan means stability in Pakistan,” Khan said at the start of a meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
He also pleaded for help in Kashmir, a disputed Muslim-majority territory, part of which has been placed under a military clampdown by neighboring India, restricting many basic freedoms.
“The most powerful country in the world has a responsibility,” Khan said, calling India’s clampdown “a siege” and warning that the “crisis is going to get much bigger”.
Trump responded that he would “certainly” help mediate between Pakistan and India as long as both governments asked for this.
On Afghanistan, the US president said that it was “ridiculous” that the United States had been fighting there for 19 years.
However he made no promises about restarting peace talks with the Taliban, saying only “we’ll see.”
Earlier, Prime Minister Khan said he planned to encourage Trump to restart talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban because there ultimately had to be a political settlement.
“I am meeting with President Trump later on and I will tell that, look, there’s not going to be a military solution,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations before the two leaders’ meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. “For 19 years if you have not been able to succeed, you’re not going to be able to succeed in another 19 years.”
Trump has frequently called for an end to America’s longest war, launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and a senior US diplomat reached a deal to pull troops after a year of negotiating with Taliban militants.
However, Trump abruptly ended talks earlier this month, revealing on Twitter that he had invited Taliban leaders to the United States but cancelled their visit after a bombing in Kabul killed a US soldier.
Khan – whose government has sought to use its influence with the Taliban – admitted that Trump’s snapping off diplomacy caught him off-guard.
“We read it in the paper. It should have been at least been discussed with us,” he said.
Khan, a former cricket star who has long criticised military operations against extremists, discounted the possibility that the Taliban would topple the internationally recognised government in Kabul without US troops.
“I don’t think the Taliban will be able to control the whole country. I think there will be a settlement,” he said. “I honestly believe that this is not the Taliban of 2001. There are lot of things that happened, and I believe they will be more accommodating.”
The Taliban imposed an austere version of Islam on most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, banning music and girls’ education and giving refuge to Al Qaeda.
Khan also said earlier that he would make a new pitch to Trump to mediate on Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India.
The US president said he wants to be a mediator between India and Pakistan, stressing that he has a positive relationship with both countries and claiming that “I have never failed as an arbitrator”.
“I am ready willing and able. If both wanted it, I would be ready to do it,” Trump said, sitting next to Prime Minister Khan, a day after he met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The US president said that his predecessors had “treated Pakistan very badly” before quickly adding: “I wouldn’t say Pakistan treated us very well either”, while noting that there might be “a reason for that”.
On Sunday Trump held a joint rally with Modi, a Hindu nationalist whose government last month revoked the Muslim-majority region’s autonomy and cut off most ordinary people’s cellular and Internet service.
During a meeting in New York with a delegation of Kashmiri leaders from both sides of the Line of Control (LoC), led by Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, Prime Minister Khan called for immediate lifting of curfew and other restrictions in Indian-administered Kashmir and resolving the Kashmir dispute according to the wishes of Kashmiris and UN Security Council resolutions.
Official sources said yesterday that Khan pledged to continue highlighting the Kashmir issue at every forum and will fulfil his promise of being the “Ambassador of Kashmir”.
The premier shared his concerns over the lockdown in Indian-administered Kashmir since August 5, and the human rights and humanitarian situation.
In their discussions, Khan and Fai noted with concern that the situation in Kashmir is grim and deteriorating by the minute.
The delegation informed the prime minister that the Kashmiri youth are being “taken” from their homes in the night and that their subsequent whereabouts are not known.
Trump with Prime Minister Khan at their meeting on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York.
