"It is a gesture of support for the Afghanistan reconciliation process," a Pakistani military official said. While this official said upwards of 10 prisoners were released, another security official put the number at seven or eight prisoners, who had been held at different jails around the country.
Whether Islamabad's gesture to Kabul eases the deep mistrust between the neighboring nations remains to be seen.
Negotiators for Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States have concluded that political reconciliation is the only viable solution to ending the war. But Taliban leaders have continuously stated their unwillingness to negotiate with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Karzai regularly criticizes Pakistan for what he calls its support of terrorist attacks and militant operations against Afghan and NATO troops.
But Karzai also recognizes that Pakistan can play a key role in brokering any peace pact — ideally before the end of 2014, when the U.S. will pull its combat troops out of Afghanistan, leaving the country more vulnerable than ever to Taliban assaults.
The two Pakistani officials, who spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to be named as spokesmen, said Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the former Taliban second-in-command behind Mullah Mohammad Omar, was not be among the prisoners to be released.
Barader, who was captured in Karachi in 2010, is considered close enough to Omar to hold some sway in efforts to bring peace. Omar broke off talks with U.S. officials earlier this year.
Wednesday's announcement of the prisoner release came during a visit to Islamabad by an Afghan High Peace Council delegation led by Salahuddin Rabbani, the son of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former peace envoy and Afghan president who was killed in Kabul by a suicide bomber in 2011.
Kabul blamed Pakistan for dispatching the assassin, an allegation that Pakistan denied.
Reuters news agency, quoting officials of the High Peace Council, identified three of the prisoners to be released as Mullah Nooruddin Toorabi, the former Taliban government justice minister; Mullah Jahangirwal, Omar's former secretary; and Allahdat Tayab, a former deputy minister.
"We have asked Pakistan to release them because they were the policymakers of the Taliban and close aides to Mullah Omar," Habibullah Fawzi, a senior member of the Afghan peace team, told Reuters.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan for five years, with strong support from Pakistan's intelligence services, until the U.S. invasion that toppled the deeply conservative Islamic regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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