A peace spoiler cannot act as a peacemaker: Dr Moeed Yusuf

National Security Advisor (NSA) Dr Moeed Yusuf has said that he would not attend a meeting in India on Afghanistan, saying “a spoiler cannot be a peacemaker.”

He was talking to the media after inking a Memorandum of Understanding with his counterpart from Uzbekistan on the formation of a multifaceted Joint Security Commission (JSC). “I will not go! I am not going … a spoiler cannot be a peacemaker,” Moeed Yusuf said when asked whether he planned to go to India on the invitation of Ajit Doval to participate in a conference on Afghanistan.

India plans to host a national security advisor-level meeting on Afghanistan in New Delhi in the second week of November. The format of the meeting will be similar to the regional security conference held in Iran in 2019 and will be the first of its kind to be hosted by New Delhi, reports in the Indian media said.

Besides the host India, other proposed invitees are Pakistan, China, Russia, Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Indian NSA Ajit Doval will chair the meeting to be organised by the National Security Council Secretariat.

Pakistan has repeatedly spoken of the role of India in Afghanistan as a spoiler and even issued a dossier of working of the Indian intelligence with the Afghan National Directorate of Security in carrying out terrorist activity in Pakistan and providing a safe haven for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Islamic State, Baloch Liberation Army and several other similar organisations.

Dr Moeed also regretted the silence of the international community over India’s massive human rights violations and state-sponsored terrorism in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and expansionist plans.

Dr Moeed Yusuf, who earlier held a round of talks with an Uzbek delegation headed by Secretary of the Security Council, and NSA of the Uzbekistan Lieutenant General Victor Makhmudo, said both Pakistan and Uzbekistan shared a similar stance on Afghanistan.

He stressed that the world needed to be in a constructive engagement with the Afghan government to avoid any humanitarian crisis.

He said peace in Afghanistan was a matter of national security for Pakistan and it was the right of the Afghans to have peace after protracted violence over the past four decades.