KABUL - Afghanistan plans to suspend an effort to work with Pakistan and the U.S. to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, Afghan officials said, taking a tougher line with Pakistan after last week's assassination of Kabul's top peace negotiator.
Senior U.S., Pakistani and Afghan officials had been set to meet in Kabul on Oct. 8 to discuss ways to get insurgents into peace talks and end the 10-year-old conflict. Afghanistan has now decided to cancel the meeting, deputy national-security adviser Shaida Mohammad Abdali said on Thursday.
Afghanistan also dropped plans for Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to attend a meeting in Kabul at the end of October of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint Commission for Reconciliation and Peace in Afghanistan, a three-month-old bilateral initiative intended to galvanize the peace process.
President Hamid Karzai received condolences at a memorial service for Burhanuddin Rabbani on Saturday.
Pakistani officials couldn't be reached to comment on the shift by Afghanistan.
Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on Afghanistan's moves. The U.S. still plans to send Marc Grossman, the State Department's special representative for the region, to Kabul for talks next week that were meant to include the trilateral meeting, said Gavin Sundwall, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy.
The decision to scuttle the meeting could complicate U.S.-led efforts to cultivate a regional dialogue that would make it easier to withdraw most coalition forces as planned by late 2014.
Kabul hasn't abandoned its push for a negotiated end to the war, though it faced a significant setback with the assassination on Sept. 20 of the man who led those efforts, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Afghan leaders have been trying to compel Pakistan to openly facilitate talks between Afghanistan and Taliban leaders. Officials in President Hamid Karzai's government say they are convinced Pakistan is intent on disrupting its attempts to engage the Taliban without interference from Islamabad.
Pakistani officials have publicly supported peace efforts, while asserting that Pakistan has a right to take part.
Though Afghan officials have criticized Pakistan before, the cancellations signal a change in strategy. "From now on Afghanistan will follow 'trust but verify' approach toward Pakistan, in particular with regard to our peace effort," said Mr. Abdali, suggesting that Kabul would, as a policy, not readily accept Pakistan's offers of help.
Afghan and U.S. relations with Islamabad have deteriorated in recent weeks following the Sept. 13 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the assassination of Mr. Rabbani a week later.
Last week, departing U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, of sponsoring the Haqqani network, the militant group blamed by the U.S. for the embassy attack.
Afghan officials have accused the ISI of organizing the plot that allowed a purported Taliban emissary to kill Mr. Rabbani. Mr. Rabbani was the head of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, which was responsible for attempts to broker a peace deal with the Taliban's top leaders, who are believed to be based in Quetta, Pakistan.
"This was a turning point," Mr. Abdali said of the assassination. "Definitely it goes back to the same place: Pakistan. The phone calls go all the way from here to Quetta." Mr. Abdali said the plot to kill Mr. Rabbani was too complicated to have been carried out by insurgents alone.
Pakistani officials have rejected the charges. "ISI isn't exporting any kind of terrorism to Afghanistan or aiding the Haqqani network," ISI chief Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha told a meeting of politicians and military leaders on Thursday, according to politicians who attended. (AP)