Pakistan summons Afghan ambassador, objects to New Delhi-Kabul joint statement

Pakistan on Saturday summoned the Afghan ambassador in its country and expressed “strong reservations” about the India-Afghanistan joint statement that was issued a day earlier, PTI reported.

Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi landed in New Delhi on Thursday for a six-day visit to India. This was the first visit to India by a high-ranking Taliban official since the group seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

A joint statement on October 10 said that India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar “expressed his deep appreciation to Afghanistan for its strong condemnation” of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. “Both sides unequivocally condemned all acts of terrorism emanating from regional countries,” the joint statement read.

On Saturday, Pakistan’s foreign office said the Additional Foreign Secretary (West Asia and Afghanistan) conveyed Pakistan’s “strong reservations” to the Afghan ambassador about references in the statement to Jammu and Kashmir.

“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 Pakistani foreign office said, according to PTI. It also objected to Muttaqi’s assertion that terrorism is an internal problem of Pakistan.

Pakistan said that shifting responsibility for controlling terrorism on to Islamabad could not absolve Afghanistan’s Taliban regime of its responsibility to ensure peace.

The foreign office noted...

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