<\/p>\n
Washington, Aug. 21 (TNS): A senior United States diplomat welcomed Prime Minister Imran Khan\u2019s\u00a0statement calling for peace on Pakistan\u2019s eastern and western borders.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe welcome the words of PM Imran in which he discussed the importance of peace on both sides of Pakistan\u2019s borders,\u201d said\u00a0US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells during a news briefing.<\/p>\n
Ambassador Wells maintained that Pakistan \u201chas a critical role to play in the stabilisation of Afghanistan\u201d and appreciated efforts taken by the two countries to improve their bilateral relations.<\/p>\n
The US statement comes as\u00a0hostility intensifies in the war-torn country with the Taliban on a general offensive in many regions of the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have encouraged Pakistan to take stronger steps to ensure that the Taliban either come to the negotiating table or are expelled back into Afghanistan rather than enjoy a safe haven outside of the country,\u201d said the US envoy while reiterating the role the country wants Pakistan to play in Afghanistan\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
The statement by the senior US diplomat came after Afghan President\u00a0Ashraf Ghani\u2019s provisional declaration of a three-month ceasefire with the Taliban in a televised broadcast on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The announcement followed a bloody week of fighting across Afghanistan which saw the Taliban launch a massive assault against the provincial capital Ghazni.<\/p>\n
Anticipation had been mounting ahead of Ghani\u2019s speech following mixed signals from the presidential palace over whether the government would offer a fresh truce \u2013 following a brief, unprecedented ceasefire earlier in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, Aug. 21 (TNS): A senior United States diplomat welcomed Prime Minister Imran Khan\u2019s\u00a0statement calling for peace on Pakistan\u2019s eastern and western borders. \u201cWe welcome the words of PM Imran in which he discussed the importance of peace on both sides of Pakistan\u2019s borders,\u201d said\u00a0US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76205,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76204\/revisions\/76205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}