Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Saturday held a telephone conversation with Acting Afghan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Amir Khan Muttaqi. Both sides discussed a range of issues of mutual concern.
FM Bilawal Bhutto Zardari reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to a stable, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan.
Earlier, Defence Minister, Khawaja Asif, has warned the Afghan Taliban that Islamabad will strike terrorists’ hideouts inside Afghanistan if the de facto rulers in Kabul are unable to rein in anti-Pakistan militants.
In a recent interview with VOA, Asif said in his late-February visit to Afghanistan that he reminded Taliban leaders to live up to their cross-border security commitments forbidding terrorists from using Afghan soil to plan and conduct attacks on Pakistan or Islamabad will take action.
“If that is not done, at some point we’ll have to resort to some measures, which will definitely — wherever [terrorists] are, their sanctuaries on Afghan soil — we’ll have to hit them,” he said. “We’ll have to hit them because we cannot tolerate this situation for long.”
Since the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021, Pakistan has witnessed a resurgence in terror attacks led by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an ideological offshoot and ally of the Afghan Taliban.
