Senior Taliban leaders in talks with officials in Pakistan

Senior Taliban leaders are meeting with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad as part of a push to revive an Afghanistan peace deal that has included stops in Russia, China and Iran.

The delegation headed by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban and head of their political office in Qatar, met with Qureshi on Thursday.

The delegation of Afghan Taliban leaders arrived in Islamabad at a time when Washington’s special peace envoy is also here for “consultations” with Pakistan.

That envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, spent the last year negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban, which seemed imminent until Sept. 7 when President Donald Trump declared the deal “dead.”

Since then Pakistan has urged both sides to resume talks to end fighting in Afghanistan.