Pakistan is more willing than before to play a role in Afghanistan's tentative peace process with the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's top officials said Sunday after a visit to Islamabad.
Taliban havens in Pakistan and Islamabad's reputed ties to insurgent leaders in the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network make neighbouring Pakistan's involvement vital in any sustainable peace deal.
Karzai, who met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, called on the Pakistani government to help Taliban rebels take part in any peace negotiations, said Mohammad Masoom Stanikzai, secretary of a peace council set up by Karzai.
"During the talks, the message of the Afghan government was very clear," he said.
"The message was that those (rebels) who want to join the peace process and reconcile should be facilitated and the means should be prepared for them in order to enable them to join the negotiations," he added.
But those who do not want to join the reconciliation process "must be dropped... No room should be left (for them to) arrange and organise and encourage people to fight and continue the war."
In response, Pakistan was "much more welcoming than at any other time", said Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer.
"The acceptance was better and (Pakistan) made some promises about practical actions and we are hopeful that (the promises) are practised in action," he added, although he did not disclose what those promises were.
The upbeat comments came after Karzai and a raft of top aides held two days of meetings in Islamabad, just weeks after US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, heightening calls within the United States for a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan.
But relations between Kabul and Islamabad are often shrouded in distrust and mutual recrimination over the violence plaguing both countries.
The Taliban have rejected peace overtures in public. But some experts believe the death of bin Laden, whom Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar refused to surrender after the September 11, 2001 attacks, could be a spur.
Pakistan was a main ally of the Taliban until joining the US-led "war on terror" following the attacks on New York and Washington and subsequently started fighting a homegrown Taliban insurgency along the Afghan border.
But Pakistan's feared intelligence services are thought to maintain links to Afghan insurgents with strongholds on its territory, namely the Haqqani network, one of the staunchest US enemies in Afghanistan, and Taliban leaders.
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