Pak PM to visit Afghanistan today

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will visit Kabul on Saturday to meet President Hamid Karzai to discuss the troubled reconciliation process in neighbouring war-torn Afghanistan.

"Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will visit Kabul on Saturday on a one-day visit," Foreign Office spokesman Aizaz Chaudhry said on Friday. The visit comes a week after a delegation from the Afghan High Peace Council, mandated for holding talks with Taliban insurgents, visited Islamabad. Media reports said that besides meeting Sharif, the team held parleys with top commander Mullah Baradar, who is among more than 35 Afghan Taliban leaders freed by Pakistan to kick start the peace and reconciliation process. Afghanistan is keen to speed up the peace process ahead of the drawdown of US and NATO forces by the end of 2014. Karzai is yet to sign a security pact with US that will allow some US troops to stay on for training and counter-terror missions. This will be Sharif's first visit to Afghanistan since he began his third term as premier in June.