From Mahnoor Makhdoom
BEIJING: China on Monday said it was maintaining communication with all relevant parties including Taliban, for holding intra-Afghan dialogue to expedite the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan.
“We support constructive dialogue between all parties including the government and Taliban,” Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Spokesperson GengShuang said during his routine briefing while responding to a question that Afghan government had concluded list for domestic representatives for the intra-Afghan talks in Beijing.
He said that respecting the will of all parties, the Chinese side would like to provide a platform for dialogue for all parties and help the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan. “Now China is maintaining communication with all relevant parties on holding this meeting in China,” he added. China, he said, supported the broad and inclusive peace and reconciliation process that was Afghan-led and Afghan-owned.
To a question about participation of Taliban representatives in the talks with Afghan government, he reiterated that the Chinese side was having communication with the relevant parties in Afghanistan for this meeting … so the parties included the Afghan government and Afghan Taliban.
Meanwhile, The Palestine Institute for National Security Research (PINSR) on Sunday organized a symposium on the role of China in the Middle East.
The symposium, in Palestine’s West Bank city of Ramallah, highlighted the growing role of China in the Middle East in light of its policy for the region and China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), organizers said.
Addressing the audience, Guo Wei, director of the Office of the People’s Republic of China to the State of Palestine, said that Chinese President Xi Jinping has a vision for the region and his four-point proposal to help solve the Palestinian-Israeli issue was met with great enthusiasm by leaders in the region.
The proposal was put forward by the Chinese leader in a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during the latter’s visit to Beijing in July 2017. In the proposal, Xi reiterated China’s firm support to a political settlement of the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution, and the establishment of an independent and fully sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. The Chinese leader also highlighted the importance of enhancing international coordination to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine, while calling for supporting Palestine’s economic development within the framework of the BRI.
“Our goal is … to create harmony in the world, where we seek just and lasting peace in the region as a whole and in Palestine, in particular,” he explained.
On the relations between Palestine and China, Abbas Zaki, head of Fatah party’s Commissioner General of the Arab and Chinese Affairs, said the historic relationship between Fatah party and China is unwavering, particularly under the development of the BRI. “We trust that China will never put interests over principles,” he said. “We believe the BRI will connect the world with collective and lasting development and allow a win-win situation and peace to prevail.”
The symposium explored China’s political and economic roles in the region, allowing the audience, who were mostly students of Chinese language and executive personnel in the Palestinian Authority who have received various trainings in China, to understand the Chinese perspective toward the region.