Zardari meets Karzai, Rice

NEW YORK: After a top-level tripartite closed door meeting between the heads of states of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, the three nations agreed to continue to pursue talks with the Taliban.
 
The meeting, one of the series of private meetings held at the UN on Wednesday night, attended by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai and the Saudi King Abdullah agreed to continue the dialogue with Taliban initiated at the mediation of the Saudis.
 
Briefing newsmen after the parleys, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the dialogue with Taliban was being held on the agreement of the renegade group to accept the constitutions of both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
 
The tripartite talks come in the wake of reports that the new Barack Obama-led administrator in the United States was not opposed to talks with reconcilable elements of Taliban.
 
The meetings in the United Nations of the three heads of states comes after a series of parleys between top Saudi, Pakistani, Afghan and Taliban officials held in Saudi Arabia recently.
 
The Pakistan president also held a 20-minute meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice where he pressed Washington to ease up on US strikes hitting Taliban and Al-Qaeda elements in Pakistan's restive border with Afghanistan.