ISLAMABAD: Pakistan should not object to Afghanistan’s ties with India and instead maintain a ‘good brotherly relationship’, Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan Dr Omer Zakhilwal said on Tuesday.
“Pakistan should not object to our ties with India. We assure that Afghanistan-India relationship will not inflict harm upon Pakistan,” he told a round table discussion titled ‘Bilateral Reconciliation: Opportunities and Challenges’, organised by the Regional Peace Institute here in the federal capital.
The ambassador said Pakistan should maintain a ‘good brotherly relationship’ with Afghanistan irrespective of the latter’s ties with any other country including India. He said both the sides will have to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and move ahead to narrow down their differences in order to build long-lasting trust-based relationship. Zakhilwal emphatically said that peace in Afghanistan was vital to establish durable peace in Pakistan, adding that both the countries should move forward to remove ‘mistrust’. He also accepted the mismanagement on part of Kabul and said that the Afghan government should take action against TTP reported sanctuaries operating against Islamabad from inside Afghanistan.
Published in Daily Times, September 13th 2017.
