US urges new Taliban leadership to engage in peace talks

The United States of America has hopes from the new Taliban leadership to engage in peaceful talks rather than using terrorism as a weapon. The US State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner expressed the government’s wishes for peace talks with the Taliban during the daily media briefing on Thursday.

During the news brief, Toner said that the attack against Mullah Mansour was based not only on his previous actions but also his intent to carry out additional strikes against Afghan forces and the US military forces on ground in Afghanistan. Toner said that in addition to these threats, Mansour was also not planning a productive role in leading towards negotiations or a peace process.

Mullah Mansour was targeted in a US drone strike on Saturday while he was coming from Iran to Pakistan. He was killed in that strike and only after the attack, Pakistan was informed about it. Both the Prime Minister and the Army Chief strongly condemned this border breach and called this strike an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty.

When asked about Pakistan’s part in the war against terrorism, Toner said; “Pakistan needs to address all groups operating on their soil – Taliban groups that are operating on their soil and their territory. We’ve urged them to do so in the past. We continue to urge them to do so and have worked with them on addressing the very real threat on their own soil.”

Toner also urged Pakistan to cooperate with India to bring the Mumbai Terror suspects to justice.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=53078

Posted by fatimaarshad on May 27 2016. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.