By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will ask for the extradition of 200 members of a banned militant group that have been arrested by the Afghan authorities, the country’s caretaker foreign minister said on Thursday.
Jalil Abbas Jilani confirmed that the Afghan Taliban had informed Pakistan about the arrests of the members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which has been waging a violent insurgency against the Pakistani state since 2007.
The TTP has intensified its attacks on Pakistan since November last year when it unilaterally called off a peace deal that had been brokered by Kabul. “
During our last meeting, they told us about it and we expect these people will be kept behind bars and dealt with according to the law,” Jilani told reporters in Islamabad. “We would ask for them to be extradited if they were not Afghans.”
Pakistan says the TTP has found sanctuaries and has even been living openly in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August 2021 as US and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.
The Afghan government says it does not permit its soil to be used by armed groups against other nations.
Jilani also said Pakistan’s position on Palestine had not changed, amid US-sponsored efforts to normalize Israeli relations with Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan does not recognize the state of Israel and has repeatedly called for an independent Palestinian state based on “internationally agreed parameters” and the pre-1967 borders with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.
“The position of Pakistan on Israel and Palestine was the same yesterday and is the same today, and it will always be the same in the future as well,” the foreign minister said. “Our policy is linked to the rights of Palestinian people.”
Israel has moved closer to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco following a US-driven diplomatic initiative in 2020 which pushed for normalization of relations.
Expectations that Israel might normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s two holiest shrines, were ratcheted up last week after the Saudi crown prince said in an interview the two countries were moving steadily closer to normalizing relations with Israel.
“The issue of Palestine’s right to self-determination is the same as Kashmiris and if we say that it is the same for the Palestinians and Kashmiris then it becomes part of our national interest to support both.”
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