Alice Wells arrives in Pakistan on four-day visit

In this file photo, Deputy Assistant US Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells attends a press conference during the UN Conference on Afghanistan in Geneva on Nov. 27, 2018. (AFP)
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Updated 19 January 2020
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Alice Wells arrives in Pakistan on four-day visit

  • The top US diplomat visited Sri Lanka and India prior to her arrival
  • US-Iran tension, Afgan peace process, military training for Pakistan on the agenda, US embassy says

ISLAMABAD: Alice G. Wells, chief US diplomat for South Asian affairs, arrived in Islamabad Sunday on a four-day state visit, the US embassy in Islamabad said in a statement. 
Wells — the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs — was received at the airport by foreign office and US embassy officials. 
She has been on a tour of South Asia since Jan. 13 and has been to Sri Lanka and India prior to her arrival in Pakistan.
The US diplomat will meet Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi after her arrival and is also expected to meet Prime Minister Imran Khan and army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa during her visit, the statement said.
She will also interact with members of the civil society during her visit, it added.
Her visit will be centered on discussions regarding the peace process in Afghanistan, Pakistan-US bilateral relations and regional concerns.
Wells will also discuss the US-Iran tension and Taliban-US peace talks during her meetings with the Pakistani officials while the issue of newly authorized US military assistance and training for Pakistan will also likely come under discussion, according to the statement.
Wells’ visit to Islamabad comes immediately after Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi concluded his trip to the US where he interacted with senior United Nations and American officials in New York and Washington, and urged the US to help get Pakistan off the grey-list of global money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force.
Wells’ last visit to Pakistan was in August last year.


Israel says forces open fire on West Bank stone-throwers, one dead

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Israel says forces open fire on West Bank stone-throwers, one dead

The Israeli military said its forces killed a Palestinian in the occupied West ​Bank in the early hours on Thursday as they opened fire on people who were throwing stones at soldiers. Two other people were hit on a main ‌road near the ‌village of Luban ‌al-Sharqiya ⁠in ​Nablus, ‌the military statement added. It described the people as militants and said the stone-throwing was part of an ambush.
Palestinian authorities in the West Bank said ⁠a 26-year-old man they named as ‌Khattab Al Sarhan was ‍killed and ‍another person wounded.
Israeli forces had ‍closed the main entrance to the village of Luban Al-Sharqiya, in Nablus, and blocked several secondary roads ​on Wednesday, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency WAFA reported.
More ⁠than a thousand Palestinians were killed in the West Bank between October 2023 and October 2025, mostly in operations by security forces and some by settler violence, the UN has said.
Over the same period, 57 Israelis were killed ‌in Palestinian attacks.