Pakistan, Afghanistan mull joint committee to reduce tensions

PESHAWAR: Following a high-powered Pakistani delegation’s visit to Kabul last week, Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to set up a technical committee to sort out their differences, said senior Pakistani diplomats in Kabul on Monday.
“Last week, Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, Director General (DG) Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Foreign Secretary Sohail Mahmood, went to Kabul to hold a meeting with the head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s top intelligence agency, and decided to form a committee to resolve outstanding issues,” a senior official at Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul, who declined to be named, told Arab News.
In a follow-up meeting on Sunday, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Zahidullah Nasrullah Khan and Afghan Acting Foreign Minister Idrees Zaman held discussions to move forward and settle bilateral issues, he added.
According to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the meeting between Khan and Zaman focused on some important bilateral arrangements as well as upcoming events.
“The two sides covered a host of issues related to bilateral ties,” the ministry’s statement added.
It stated that the discussions also included the upcoming Beijing Dialogue and the Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity (APAPPS) meeting due to be held in Kabul in the coming weeks. 
APAPPS framework provides an inclusive mechanism to enhance engagement between the institutions of the two countries.
“During the course of meeting between the two intelligence chiefs, they discussed a range of issues, such as the summoning of the Afghan Ambassador, Atif Mashal, by intelligence officials in Islamabad, harassment of Pakistani diplomats in Kabul, construction of Pakistan Army check post on the Pak-Afghan border, dispute over the Afghan Market in Peshawar and firing incidents on civilian population in Chitral district by the Afghan security forces,” the Pakistani official added.
The technical committee, he continued, would evaluate the reasons behind the growing diplomatic tensions between the two estranged neighbors.