KABUL: Reacting to the merger of Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the former President Hamid Karzai has said that the government of Pakistan has no legal authority to dictate terms on the Durand Line, a de facto border between the two states. “The government of Pakistan has no legal authority to dictate terms on the Durand Line. ...

ISLAMABAD: Afghan Ambassador Omar Zakhilwal on Saturday said Pakistan does not have a justification for the continued closure of crossing points with Afghanistan on Durand Line, and that his country might send in chartered flights to airlift stranded Afghans in case the crossing points are not reopened soon. In a message posted to his Facebook page, Zakhilwal said he had ...

ISLAMABAD: Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs and FATA Reforms Committee Chairman Sartaj Aziz said that Federal Cabinet has approved recommendations of the Committee for the integration of tribal areas into national mainstream in five years after consultations with all the stakeholders. Addressing a news conference after the cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the chair in ...

MUNICH: ‘Combating terrorism needs inter-state cooperation at international, regional and national levels, President Ashraf Ghani said at the 53rd Munich Security Conference (MSC). On Saturday night, the president told the conference in Munich: “Afghanistan is a country in the frontline of the war on terrorism, fighting against about 20 terrorist groups.” The terrorist outfits had been identified by the United ...

CHARSADDA: Awami National Party (ANP) president Asfandyar Wali Khan has warned that his party will stage a sit-in in Islamabad if Fata (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) is not merged with Khyber Pakht­unkhwa province before March 12. Speaking at a public gathering here on Tuesday, he demanded that the federal government announce a decision on the merger of Fata with KP ...

Ajmal Khattak, the veteran Pashtun politician, poet, writer and former president of Awami National Party, died in penury on 7 February 2010, after six decades of unremitting political struggle in Pakistan for the political and economic autonomy of the Pashtun people, sliced off by the British-Indian Empire in 1893 from Afghanistan.  Ajmal Khattak was politically active during his student life. ...

A win-win situation: ‘UN Security Council lifts sanctions on HIA leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; Afghan officials laud the removal’ KABUL: The United Nations Security Council on Friday dropped sanctions against Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the leader of Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), aimed at supporting peace drive in Afghanistan. As part of peace deal, the Afghan government requested the UN Security Council to remove HIA ...

KABUL: The United States would consider sending more troops to Afghanistan in a bid to prevent further deterioration of the security of the country. The commitment was reportedly made during a telephone conversation between President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and Donald Trump in December last year when he was the president-elect of the United States. Afghan officials privy of the development ...

KABUL: Islamabad is moving to hold ‘tough talks’ with the Afghan government in the upcoming visit of Pakistan’s Army Chief General Javed Bajwa to Kabul. Sources describe that Gen. Bajwa would visit Afghanistan when the time is right, aimed to rebuild the fractured ties between the two countries. One of the Pakistani security officials told a local Pakistani newspaper on ...

Karzai asks Trump for shift in US policy towards Islamabad KABUL: “Donald Trump must make a dramatic, strategic and immediate shift in US policy towards Pakistan. Anything less than that will be a continuation of Afghan misery and rise of extremism”, said Afghanistan’s former President Hamid Karzai as he blamed Barack Obama for failing to address terror sanctuaries in Pakistan ...