Afghan political leaders held a peace conference in Pakistan on Saturday to open the door for further Afghan-to-Afghan dialogue. The three-day conference, which comes ahead of President Ashraf Ghanis visit to Pakistan next week, is set to be followed by meetings and work sessions over the next two days. Ghani and his political opponents have been holding talks with the United States special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who is continuing to press for talks between the Afghan government, the opposition and the Taliban. No representatives of the Taliban were present at Saturdays meeting near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Meanwhile, Washington has been holding talks with the Taliban to find a negotiated exit to its 17-year engagement in Afghanistan. However, the Taliban have refused to sit with government representatives but say they will sit with any Afghan, even a government official, but as an ordinary Afghan and not as a government representative. An earlier attempt at Afghan-to-Afghan talks was scuttled after neither side could agree on participants. According to AP, Saturdays meeting was backed by the Pakistani government and organized by two think tanks, the Lahore Center for Peace Research and the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi opened the conference by saying his country will continue its efforts toward peace and stability in Afghanistan.