Thu 12 August 2021:
Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, has accused the US of seeing his country as only valuable in the context of the “mess” it is leaving behind in Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting.
“Pakistan is just considered only to be useful in the context of somehow settling this mess which has been left behind after 20 years of trying to find a military solution when there was not one,” Khan told foreign journalists at his home in Islamabad on Wednesday.
Khan said Islamabad was not taking sides in Afghanistan.
“I think that the Americans have decided that India is their strategic partner now, and I think that’s why there’s a different way of treating Pakistan now,” Khan said.
As negotiations between the fighters and the Afghan government have stalled, and violence in Afghanistan has risen drastically, Washington has pressed Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban to mediate an elusive peace deal.
A political settlement in Afghanistan was looking difficult under current conditions, Khan added.
He said he tried to persuade Taliban leaders when they were visiting Pakistan to reach a settlement.
“The condition is that as long as Ashraf Ghani is there, we (Taliban) are not going to talk to the Afghan government,” Khan said, quoting the Taliban leaders as telling him.
Also on Wednesday, the Pakistani military in a statement said all stakeholders should play their part “positively for enduring peace” in Afghanistan, calling it a “collective responsibility”.
Misperceptions and scapegoating must be avoided to counter designs of spoilers, it quoted military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa as saying.
Khan said Pakistan had “made it very clear” that it does not want any American military bases in Pakistan after US forces exit Afghanistan.
