Jim Shannon – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-01-12.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with the (a) Afghan and (b) Pakistani government on reducing the influence of the Taliban in that country.
Mr Tobias Ellwood
The Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) held a trilateral meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in December 2015, where they discussed reducing the influence of the Taleban on Afghanistan. The Prime Minister also spoke to President Ghani and Prime Minister Sharif individually on the topic. Both President Ghani and Prime Minister Sharif reiterated their commitment to an Afghan owned and led peace process as the only route to a stable and secure Afghanistan.
In September, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) met with the Afghan Chief Executive Officer Dr Abdullah Abdullah and discussed the situation in Afghanistan. Since August 2015, the Foreign Secretary has spoken with a number of senior Pakistani figures including: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar; former National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz; and Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif.
I discussed the Taleban influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan with a number of senior interlocutors, including President Ghani, during my visit to Pakistan in September 2015 and my visit to Afghanistan in December 2015.
