KABUL - President Hamid Karzai began a five-day visit to Britain on Tuesday in which he will meet with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and British Prime Minister David Cameron in a series of trilateral talks aimed at kick-starting the stalled Taliban peace process.

Cameron will chair the meetings, which more broadly are looked at by most experts to be geared toward improving troubled relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The leaders will also discuss on the Afghan peace process, which is at the moment the biggest source of tension between them.

The meetings are expected to begin on Wednesday.

Reportedly, in addition to broader discussions on how to hasten the reconciliation process, Karzai intends to demand an explanation from Prime Minister Sharif on the issue of former Taliban second-in-command Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar's release from prison.

Baradar, who was captured in Karachi in 2010, is considered a pragmatic negotiator who reached out to Kabul with a peace initiative before his detention and is expected to be a big help in getting talks back on track if released.

After Karzai requested he be freed on a trip to Pakistan in August, officials in Islamabad announced that they would release him, signaling to many experts that relations were improving between the estranged South Asian neighbors and Pakistani officials were now more committed to advancing the Afghan peace process than they had been in the past. However, that optimism has since been called into question with recent reports indicating that Baradar remains in the custody of Pakistani authorities.

Many in the Afghan government believe the Taliban's safe havens in Pakistan are the main cause of increased violence in Afghanistan. Elements within Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, have long been accused of backing the Afghan Taliban and giving them refuge on Pakistani soil - something Islamabad strongly denies.

At the first round of trilateral talks hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron in Chequers in February, Karzai met with Pakistani officials, though not the Prime Minister at the time Raja Pervaiz Ashraf. The leaders made a number of ambitious promises about negotiations including bringing a ceasefire to Afghanistan in six months.

But nine months later, reconciliation talks with the Taliban remain dead in the water and Afghan and coalition forces are coming out of one of the violent fighting seasons since the war began twelve years ago. All just under a year away from the end of the NATO combat mission and withdraw of coalition troops.

There are currently around 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, out of which around 68,000 are Americans. NATO forces are scheduled to leave by December of 2014, after which time the Afghan security forces – currently numbering at around 350,000 men – will take over full security responsibility of the country. (Tolo News)