Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Tuesday he would meet with the Taliban after returning to his country, as part of efforts to end 18 years of war in Afghanistan.
Mr. Khan spoke in Washington on his first official trip to the U.S.
He said he had also spoken with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and now, when he goes back, “I will meet the Taliban and I will try my best to get them to talk to the Afghan government.”
Speaking at the U.S. Institute for Peace, Mr. Khan said he had been contacted by the Taliban “a few months back”, after his election win in July 2018, but did not take a meeting at that time because Kabul was not in favour of it.
The militants reached out to him “because I always maintained there was no military solution” to the war in Afghanistan, he said.