NEW DELHI: A day after a top Donald Trump aide rapped Pakistan, again, for not bringing the Taliban within its borders to heel, she heads to Islamabad today for crucial talks, and perhaps more knuckle raps.
"Pakistan has an important role to play…but we have not yet seen that sustained and decisive action on the part of Islamabad," said Trump aide Alice Wells, principal deputy assistant secretary for the State Department's Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, to reporters in Kabul, reported AP.
Wells said that since the Afghan government and the US are willing to start talking without preconditions, the onus was now on the Taliban to respond. And the Taliban in neighbouring Pakistan is big problem.
"Right now, it's the Taliban leaders…who aren't residing in Afghanistan, who are the obstacle to a negotiated political settlement," said Wells, according to AFP.
Wells will hold crucial talks this week in Islamabad - her third visit to Pakistan this year - to explore the possibility of resuming the Afghan reconciliation process. She's expected to meet senior officials at Pakistan foreign office as well as military authorities, reported Pakistan's The Express Tribune.
The Trump administration has been putting huge pressure on Pakistan - royally castigating it in public and withholding as much as $200 million in aid - to do more in the fight against terrorism.
Just last week, a global terror funding watchdog put it on an uncomplimentary 'gray list' for not doing enough to cut off the legs from under terror organisations and terrorists who roam freely in the country spreading hate and disharmony and of course launching attacks on neighbours including India and Pakistan.
But Islamabad has its own reservations - including the threat posed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan - or the Pakistani Taliban - and its affiliates operating out of Afghanistan. According to the Tribune, the elimination of terrorist Mullah Fazlullah seems to "suggest a new understanding between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US", whatever that means.