KABUL - The United States has reiterated support for national unity government leaders, stressing the need for an Afghan-led reconciliation process.
State Department spokesman John Kirby, addressing a media briefing in Washington on Tuesday, suggested Washington had no objection to a recent trilateral meeting in Moscow on Afghanistan.
Last week, Russia, China and Pakistan met on ways of coordinating their efforts for peace in the conflict-torn country. “I’ll say what we welcome is any international effort to help Afghanistan become secure and more prosperous.”
He said the US continued to support an Afghan-led reconciliation process, believing that was the right way to go forward. Washington’s support to President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah remained steadfast, he said.
“Afghanistan as a nation-state has every right and every responsibility, quite frankly, for the betterment of their own people to have, whether it’s multilateral or bilateral, discussions with neighbouring nations,” Kirby remarked.
But the Afghan government, not invited to the discussion, protested its exclusion from the meeting.  “We obviously weren’t there either, so I can’t speak to the specifics of this meeting,” the spokesman said.
“But to the degree that countries are meeting to discuss the same secure, safe, prosperous Afghanistan that we all want to see and they can come up with ideas to pursue that, in keeping with mandates from the international community and in particular NATO, those can be – they could be constructive,” he added. (Pajhwok)