Islamabad: Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States are set to revive trilateral talks after a nearly seven-month deadlock, Afghan diplomats and Pakistani officials have said.
Senior diplomats from the three countries are scheduled to meet in Tajikistan on March 25 ahead of the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan, an Afghan diplomat and a Pakistani Foreign Ministry official said.
The Afghan diplomat and the Pakistani official, requesting anonymity, said US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman and Afghan Deputy Minister Jawed Ludin would be in attendance during the meeting at Dushanbe.
Pakistan would be represented by Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani.
Officials from the three countries last met in Islamabad in September last year, a few days before the assassination of Afghan peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani that was subsequently blamed by Afghan officials on elements based in Pakistan.
Afghanistan suspended high-level contacts with Pakistan after the killing, saying it was planned in Pakistan and carried out by a Pakistani suicide bomber.
Islamabad dismissed the charges as baseless and assured it would cooperate in a probe into the assassination.
The Afghan reconciliation process hit another stumbling block when Pakistani-US relations hit a low in November last year after a cross-border NATO air strike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
However, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar's visit to Kabul and President Hamid Karzai s trip to Islamabad last month marked the revival of high-level contacts between the two countries.
Earlier, Pakistan had turned down a US request for Grossman to visit Islamabad, saying the trip would not be fruitful till Islamabad concluded a parliamentary review of its relations with Washington.
The trilateral meeting will be held a day ahead of the fifth Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan in Dushanbe.
President Asif Ali Zardari has left for Dushanbe to attend the conference, which will consider proposals and projects aimed at boosting regional cooperation with Afghanistan.
The meeting between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US will be held at a time when the Taliban have broken off talks with the US in Qatar, citing unacceptable demands by Washington. Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the talks have not yet been resumed and the militants are awaiting a "positive" response to their three major demands.
Listing these demands, he said the Taliban have proposed the release of some prisoners, removal of the names of Taliban leaders from the UN sanctions lists and recognition of the Taliban political office in Qatar.
"The US must show a positive response to our demands to build trust," he said. An Afghan source, privy to last month's talks between Karzai and the Pakistan government, said Islamabad had assured Afghan leaders that it would "reach out to the Taliban" and encourage them to hold an intra-Afghan dialogue.
The Taliban have so far ignored last month's appeal from Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to Afghan militants groups to join the reconciliation process. Talban spokesman Mujahid said the militants' political commission had not yet made any decision on responding to Gilani's appeal.
The trilateral meet thus assumes importance in the wake of the deadlock in talks between the Afghan Taliban and the US.
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