A first of its kind trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of China, Afghanistan and Pakistan is convening in Beijing. The three agreed to establish a trilateral dialogue during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to the two countries in June.

Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif of Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Acting Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani will head delegations to the dialogue.

“China, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as three neighbors, will naturally try to strengthen cooperation amongst each other,” Wang said on Monday. “This is fully in accordance with our common interests, and is a good thing for us.”

According to Beijing, the three countries will have in-depth discussions on three topics:

• Mutual political trust and reconciliation
• Development cooperation and connectivity
• And security cooperation and counter-terrorism.

This may be the first time the three countries come together on a ministerial level, but they’ve held several rounds of counter-terrorism talks before. The last was November in Beijing, where all the three agreed that they should step up cooperation on counter-terrorism and security.

China, in particular, thanked Pakistan and Afghanistan for supporting Beijing’s fight against the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and other groups.

Beijing had said that it supports an Afghan-led reconstruction process, and would like to work closer with Islamabad and Kabul on the Belt and Road Initiative.

He Wenping discusses first-ever China, Afghan, Pakistan FM meeting

A first of its kind trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of China, Afghanistan and Pakistan is convening in Beijing. Though the three countries have held several rounds of counter-terrorism talks before, this is the first time the three will come together at a ministerial level. On the agenda is security, development and economic cooperation. He Wenping, a research fellow at China’s Academy of Social Sciences, discusses with CGTN’s Asieh Namdar.