#dohatalks

US envoys arrived in Doha for technical talks, but no high-level meeting with Iran is scheduled, raising doubts about a lasting US-Iran ceasefire deal.

India will attend the start of the intra-Afghan talks in Doha on Saturday, where a senior official will participate in-person and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will join in virtually. Joint Secretary (Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran) in Ministry of External Affairs, J P Singh, in Doha will witness the ceremony. Singh, who has served in Afghanistan as First Secretary (political) and Pakistan as Deputy High Commissioner, is the government’s point person on India’s ties with three countries — Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. India had attended the signing of the US-Taliban pact on February 29. At that point, the Indian ambassador to Qatar P Kumaran had witnessed the event. But this time, a top Indian official has flown down to Doha and the Foreign minister is joining in virtually. This is a significant move, given India’s reticence in acknowledging power-sharing arrangements in Kabul. Earlier this week, Jaishankar had visited Iran and had discussed the situation in Afghanistan. Two days after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met his counterpart in Iran, the External Affairs Minister had on Tuesday flown to Tehran and met Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and discussed the Chabahar port project and the situation in Afghanistan. Jaishankar, who was on his way to Moscow for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Monday, made a “technical halt” for refueling the special aircraft. Read the full article