By Kamran Yousaf

Published: July 20, 2012

KABUL:Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed on Thursday to resume stalled talks on Afghanistan’s peace process, with Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf pledging to help arrange meetings between Afghan and Taliban representatives.Following day-long talks in Kabul, Britain’s visiting Prime Minister David Cameron, Premier Ashraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai said they had agreed to resume meetings of the two-track peace commission.

The three leaders first held a trilateral meeting and later Karzai and Ashraf, whose visit to Kabul was his first in his new role, had separate talks, which lasted over two hours.

Prime Minister Ashraf was accompanied by Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lt General Zaheerul Islam, in talks with the top Afghan authorities that one official described ‘as frank and candid’.

A joint statement issued after the talks said the two countries would soon resume regular meetings of the ‘two-tier’ joint commission to seek peace with the Taliban.

The commission was suspended last year following the assassination of former Afghan president and peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani. Afghan officials publicly accused the ISI for being behind his assassination, a charge strongly refuted by Islamabad. More