Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed Islamabad’s plan to release Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who once served as the second-in-command for Taliban in Afghanistan.
The ministry’s spokesman, Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, said in a news conference in Islamabad on Friday that the Pakistani government is “committed, in principle” to releasing Mullah Baradar in the coming days.
According to the senior official, Pakistan has released at least seven high-profile Afghan Taliban prisoners over the past few weeks.
Chaudhry added that the objective of releasing Taliban detainees was to “contribute to the reconciliation process in Afghanistan.”
Mullah Baradar was captured in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in 2010.
Baradar is one of the co-founders of the Taliban movement in 1994, and was reported to be a close aide of Mullah Omar, the chief of the Taliban.
Afghanistan is seeking help from its neighbor to open up a direct channel of communications with Taliban militants. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has urged Pakistan several times to facilitate peace talks with the militant group.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has also been an advocate of peace talks with Taliban militants since his election campaign, which ended in his May victory.
The relations between Kabul and Islamabad are traditionally mired in distrust. Afghanistan and Pakistan blame each other for the Taliban violence plaguing both countries.
Over a decade of the costly US-led war in Afghanistan has failed to end militancy in the country and the US which has thousands of troops on the ground in Afghanistan is now trying to sit down for talks with Taliban militants.
JR/KA
Copyright: Press TV