US envoy on Afghan peace takes his mission to Pakistan

KABUL, Oct 09 (Agencies): Washington's newly-named point man tasked with finding a peaceful end to Afghanistan's 17-year war is in Pakistan to seek help from the new government in Islamabad in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table, the US Embassy said Tuesday.

A former US ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad arrived in Pakistan from neighboring Afghanistan. His tour of the region will also include Middle East stops in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

In Afghanistan, he met with President Ashraf Ghani, a long-time friend. Khalilzad, who was also born in Afghanistan, first served in Kabul as a special envoy of President George W. Bush following the 2001 ouster of the Taliban, and then later as Washington's ambassador.

But Khalilzad has had a prickly relationship with Pakistan and has often accused Islamabad of fomenting violence in Afghanistan by supporting the Taliban. He has even said the United States should declare Pakistan a terrorist state.

Meanwhile, a suspected suicide bomb attack at an election rally in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday killed at least eight people and wounded 10 others, officials said.

The attack took place in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand, a southern province bordering Pakistan that has seen some of the fiercest fighting of the Taliban insurgency.

The Taliban has ramped up attacks in strategic provinces ahead of the parliamentary polls set for October 20, and on Monday directed Afghans to boycott voting, while demanding a complete withdrawal of foreign forces as the only way to end the 17-year-old war.