ISLAMABAD: According to a source and the US State Department, the new US special envoy for Afghanistan, Thomas West, will visit Pakistan this week for a meeting with the Taliban foreign minister and top diplomats from China and Russia.
It will be West’s first trip to the region since succeeding Zalmay Khalilzad, the long-serving diplomat who oversaw the negotiations that led to the US pullout from Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban’s new foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, will attend the “troika plus” meeting in Islamabad on Thursday, a senior Pakistani government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
West also planned to travel to Russia and India, according to the State Department.
“He will continue to make clear the expectations that we have of the Taliban and any future Afghan government, together with our partners,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a briefing this week.
The meeting is “mainly aimed at…finding measures to avert a humanitarian crisis and looking into the chances of establishing up an inclusive administration in Afghanistan,” according to a senior Pakistani official.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned that Afghanistan is on the verge of becoming the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than half of the nation suffering from “acute” food shortages and millions forced to choose between migration and famine throughout the winter.
West, who was in Brussels this week to brief NATO on US operations with the Taliban, told reporters that Daesh had “pretty clearly” expressed a wish for aid to be restored, as well as for international ties to be normalised and sanctions to be lifted.
On those problems, he urged partners to work together, saying that Washington “cannot accomplish any of these things on our own.”