China joined the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan on Monday for an important gathering in Islamabad aimed at charting a course for the end of the conflict in war-torn Afghanistan.

Recently, there has been a rise in the number of soldier deaths in Afghanistan. Taliban representatives were not invited to the talks as they had vowed to only talk to the U.S. and not to the Afghan government.

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Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs adviser to the Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif, warned against prematurely deciding which fractions of the Taliban are ready to talk. Instead, Aziz called for more confidence building measures to get the Taliban to come to the negotiation table.

"Even at the best of the times the Taliban did not listen to us" said Aziz, who refused to say whether Pakistan has a list of Taliban representatives. The existence of such a list was announced on Sunday by Javid Vaisal, the spokesperson of Afghanistan's Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.

Even though the Taliban was not invited to Mondays talks, a Taliban official, who does not want to be identified, has revelead that two Taliban delegates will be meeting with Chinese and Pakistani officials in Islamabad.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani does not want to play any part in giving the Taliban official recognition. 

Afghan Peace Council representative Maulvi Shazada said that the distance between the two sides is very vast, which means the hope for peace is slim to none. "With the current situation, it is not possible to bring peace anytime soon," he said.

TagsAfganistan, Peace, talks, Afghanistan Peace Talks