President Asif Ali Zardari would meet his Afghan contemporary, Hamid Karzai, on the sidelines of the two-day ECO conference beginning in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday (today), to seek clarification about his reported comments that conditions would be attached to negotiations on a ‘strategic partnership agreement’ with Pakistan.
Well-placed diplomatic sources told The Nation that the president would meet take up the issue with Karzai in order to do away with the confusion the reported assertions had created.
The sources said that Zardari would impress upon his Afghan counterpart that Pakistan desired to promote good neighbourly relation with Afghanistan on the basis of mutual respect and interest.
President Zardari would also underscore that Pakistan would like to have a mature and responsible dialogue with the Afghan side and that Pakistan had invested heavily in terms of human and economic losses to promote stability in Afghanistan.
The sources further said that Zardari would also request Karzai to refrain from making such media messaging and instead present his proposals, whatsoever, directly to Pakistan when he would visit Islamabad later this year. The two leaders would also discuss the various issues of mutual interest, including reconciliation process, cross-border infiltrations from Afghanistan, they added.
In a press release issued from New York on September 29, the Afghan president underscored a strategic partnership agreement during a trilateral summit in the US financial hub.
According to the sources, the two-day ECO conference would discuss economic development, trade and investment issues to strengthen the vital regional forum by promoting further cooperation among the member countries.
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