Inclusion of ‘outsiders’ in Afghan plan opposed

[Robb]

Source: DAWN


Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta shake hands during a joint meeting in Islamabad on January 16, 2010.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan affirmed on Saturday that their trilateral cooperation was key to peace and stability in Afghanistan and that any regional arrangement for resolving the Afghan conflict should co-opt only immediate neighbours of the war-ravaged country.

The statement took into account recent reports that the United Kingdom had floated a proposal to include India and some other countries in a security umbrella for Afghanistan.

“We stress further that any regional or international conference should acknowledge the salience of our trilateral engagement and cooperation for achieving common objectives and lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan… stress that these processes must be indigenous and have ownership of all immediate neighbours of Afghanistan,” said the Islamabad Declaration issued after a meeting of foreign ministers of the three countries....

(snip)

...The three foreign ministers agreed on expanding their trilateral cooperation to include Afghanistan’s other immediate neighbours -- Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and China. A meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries will be held in Tehran after the London conference....

Read more: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-tripartite-meeting-qs-08

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Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and China. I've been on about this lately, if you check my journal.