Turkey's foreign and defense ministers, along with the head of Turkey's intelligence service, will visit Pakistan next week to discuss stalled talks with Afghanistan to reach a ceasefire in the region, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, quoted by the Anadolu Agency and Reuters, BTA reports.
Erdogan made the statement during his flight back from Baku, where he attended the fifth anniversary of Azerbaijan's victory in Nagorno-Karabakh and met with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He said the aim of the tripartite meeting was to achieve a final ceasefire and establish lasting peace as soon as possible.
The delegation will include Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Defense Minister Yasar Guler and Turkish Intelligence Chief Ibrahim Kalin, the Anadolu Agency reported.
On November 6, Pakistan and Afghanistan resumed peace talks in Istanbul after deadly border clashes, but a day later, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif announced that the talks had failed. He added that Pakistan would abide by the ceasefire as long as there were no attacks from the Afghan side.
Last month, clashes broke out along the border, killing dozens of people, including soldiers and civilians, and injuring hundreds. The violence began after explosions in Kabul on October 9, which the Taliban government blamed on Pakistan. The fighting stopped on October 19 after Qatari mediation, and the ceasefire remains in effect.