China is set to host Afghanistan's Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah for the first time next week amid criticism by Kabul that China, a member of a four-nation group initiating peace talks with the Taliban, has failed to rein in the militants.
Abdullah, the number two after President Abdul Ghani in Afghanistan leadership will visit China from May 15 to 18, the Foreign Ministry here announced.
Besides holding talks with the Chinese leadership in Beijing Abdullah will also visit Urumqi, the provincial capital of China's volatile Xinjiang province which witnessed protests from native Uyghur Muslims over the settlements of majority Han Chinese.
The province, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) also witnessed large-scale violence reportedly carried out by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) militants.
China started taking active part in Afghan peace process after the high-profile visit of Ghani last year. Ghani chose to visit China first and backed the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) comprising of China, Pakistan, US and Afghanistan to facilitate process by promoting talks betweenTaliban and Afghanistan. The QCG omitted India which has strong stakes in Afghanistan's peace process.
But the QCG process suffered a set back after the news of the death of Taliban founder Mullah Omar. Since then violence escalated in Afghanistan following which Ghani and his administration stepped up criticism against Pakistan and asked the QCG to deliver on its promise.
Ahead of Abdullah's visit Afghanistan's Ambassador to Beijing, Hekmat Khalil Karzai in recent interview to state-run Global Times said Kabul will demand answers from the QCG members about striking a deal with Taliban.
China also hosted a Taliban delegation in the past.
"The objective of the QCG is to bring the Taliban to the table. If the four parties are not able to do so, then the reality is that they need to take actions against all of the groups that are not going to participate in the reconciliation," Karzai had said.
"So far, all the parties' efforts have not brought the Taliban to the table. Our position is that we are going to ask each country, China, the US and particularly Pakistan, to tell us what they have done to deal with the Taliban. That's their commitment," he said.
"The most important thing for the QCG is to deliver. When all the four countries came, they made good progress on paper, but after that they haven't been able to show results or deliver. Every country has its own agenda, but the objective of the QCG is not for them to work on different agendas but particularly focus on bringing the Taliban to the table," he had said.
