National security adviser Moeed Yusuf has complained about US President Joe Biden’s failure to contact Prime Minister Imran Khan as Washington seeks Islamabad's help to refrain the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, 24NewsHD TV channel reported.

The cold shoulder from Washington comes as the Taliban has captured swaths of territory across Afghanistan in a ruthless offensive emboldened by the US pullout. 

 “The president of the United States hasn’t spoken to the prime minister of such an important country who the US itself says is make-or-break in some cases, in some ways, in Afghanistan –  we struggle to understand the signal, right?”  Yusuf told the Financial Times in an interview at Pakistan’s embassy in Washington.

“We’ve been told every time that . . . [the phone call] will happen, it’s technical reasons or whatever. But frankly, people don’t believe it,” he said.

“If a phone call is a concession, if a security relationship is a concession, Pakistan has options,” he added, refusing to elaborate.

A senior Biden administration official said: “There are still a number of world leaders President Biden has not been able to speak with personally yet. He looks forward to speaking with Prime Minister Khan when the time is right.”

Yusuf travelled to Washington as part of a delegation including the head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency, to discuss the Afghan crisis. “There is no question of a civil-military disconnect in Pakistan, let me be categorical if the Prime Minister had not instructed me and the delegation to be here, we won’t have been here,” said Yusuf, who added that Pakistan had diminished leverage over the Taliban.