Pakistan on Saturday summoned the Afghan ambassador to express its “strong reservations” over the India-Afghanistan joint statement issued in New Delhi a day earlier.
Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, who arrived in New Delhi on Thursday, is currently on a six-day visit to India.
Pak’s “Strong Reservations” To Afghan
In a statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Office (FO) said that the Additional Foreign Secretary (West Asia & Afghanistan) had conveyed Islamabad’s “strong reservations” to the Afghan envoy regarding references made to Jammu and Kashmir in the joint statement.
“It was conveyed that the reference to Jammu and Kashmir as part of India is in clear violation of the relevant UN Security Council resolutions…,” the FO stated.
According to the joint statement, Afghanistan had strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir in April and expressed condolences and solidarity with the people and the Government of India.
Both countries also “unequivocally condemned all acts of terrorism emanating from regional countries” and emphasised the need to promote peace, stability, and mutual trust in the region.
Islamabad also dismissed Muttaqi’s remark that terrorism was an internal issue of Pakistan.
The FO maintained that shifting responsibility for tackling terrorism onto Pakistan “could not absolve the Afghan Interim Government of its obligations” to ensure regional peace and stability.
Highlighting its decades-long hospitality, the FO said Pakistan had hosted nearly four million Afghans for over forty years.
With peace now returning to Afghanistan, Islamabad reiterated that unauthorised Afghan nationals residing in Pakistan should return home.
“Like all other countries, Pakistan has the right to regulate the presence of foreign nationals residing inside its territory,” it said, adding that Pakistan continued to grant medical and study visas to Afghan citizens “in the spirit of Islamic brotherhood and good neighbourly relations.”
Reaffirming its commitment to a “peaceful, stable, regionally connected and prosperous Afghanistan”, the FO noted that Pakistan had extended trade, economic, and connectivity facilitation to enhance socio-economic cooperation between the two nations.
However, it also underlined that Pakistan had a responsibility to ensure the safety of its people and expected the Afghan government to take “concrete measures” to prevent its soil from being used by terrorist elements against Pakistan.
(With inputs from IBNS)
