Chinese envoy calls for regional peace, stability.

PESHAWAR -- Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing on Saturday said all regional countries and the United States wanted a political settlement of the Afghan conflict.

'As part of the Afghan peace process, China is going to convene an intra-Afghan meeting bringing together the representatives of the Afghan government, opposition leaders and the Taliban,' the envoy told reporters here.

Mr Jing said China, Pakistan, Russia and the US held a quadrilateral meeting in Moscow on Friday (Oct 25) to take the peace initiative forward.

Says US, regional countries want political settlement of Afghan conflict

'All regional countries and the United States being a major stakeholder [in the Afghan peace process] want a political settlement of the Afghan conflict, which is why we are going to hold the intra-Afghan meeting,' he said.

The ambassador said as part of the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Practical Cooperation Dialogue, there was a plan to lay railway lines from Peshawar to Jalalabad and from Quetta to Qandahar but peace in Afghanistan was important.

'With these [quadrilateral and intra-Afghan] meetings, we are working towards establishing that,' he said.

Mr Yao Jing was in Peshawar to attend a seminar on 'Friends of the Silk Road - on CPEC and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa' organised by the Pakistan-China Institute and China Study Centre at the University of Peshawar.

In the keynote speech, the ambassador said China underscored the need for peace and stability in the region so that Chinese firms could execute the 'dream project of linking Quetta, Chaman to Gwadar and Peshawar to Kabul and onwards to Kazakhstan through railway'.

He said developing the newly-merged KP tribal districts and Gilgit Baltistan, where 'our forefathers lived and belonged', was a top priority of China.

'The Chinese government has approved 58 schools in formerFata, 50 vocational centres in the countryand 30 hospitals in KP province,' he said. The envoy asked the higher education institutions to come...