ISLAMABAD – Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas arrived in Pakistan on Monday night to send a message confirming his country’s commitment to Afghan conflict resolution and economic development in the South Asia region.
The Germany minister was welcomed at Nur Khan base by high-level officials of Pakistan’s foreign office.
Mr Maas will will hold meetings with his counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and top civil and military leaders
Yesterday, the German minister paid to trip to Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan as a clear signal Germany was committed to playing its part in a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Germany is part of the NATO Resolute Support mission to train Afghan security forces and has a force of about 1,200 soldiers stationed there.
Berlin decided last month to extend the military mission, and Germany has offered to host a peace conference that is to include the Taliban.
“With the trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, we want to send a clear message: Germany is committed to the responsibility we have assumed as the second-largest donor and contributor of troops in Afghanistan,” Maas told DW.
The German government was pursuing the goal of reassuring Afghans “that we will continue to work for a peaceful resolution to conflict and the economic development of the region,” he said in a prepared statement.
He added that negotiations with the Taliban should not mean “a return to a painful past.”
He hailed advances made by Afghanistan in the field of human rights and establishing the rule of law, giving special mention to the improvement made in the lives of young women, above all.
This progress was to be retained, he said, calling it a “prerequisite for our future cooperation.”
According to the German publication, there are discussions in Berlin on the future of the German mission, and the Bundestag is debating whether to extend the mandate for Afghanistan.
The German mission is largely dependent on US infrastructure in Afghanistan. Washington has announced plans to withdraw half of the US military’s 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, and this would have an effect on the German mission.
However, Maas warned that everything that the German military had achieved in the country “would very quickly collapse” if Berlin were to withdraw its troops now.
