*WASHINGTON – **US President Donald Trump had planned a secret meeting withAfghan Taliban in Camp David, he himself revealed in series of tweets.*
*US President Donald Trump has cancelled ‘peace negotiations’ with theTaliban after the group said they were behind an attack in Kabul thatkilled a US soldier and 11 other people.*
Trump made the announcement in a series of tweets on Sunday, saying he has“called off peace negotiations” with Afghan and Taliban leaders. The“secret” meeting was scheduled for Sunday at Camp David in Maryland.
The talks had appeared to be on the brink of a landmark deal to bring anend to 18 years of war.
Kabul has been gripped by a surge in deadly violence even after the US andthe insurgents reached an agreement “in principle” that would see the USpull thousands of troops from Afghanistan in return for various Talibansecurity promises.
Any deal would have needed final approval from Trump, who has said that hewants to end American involvement in Afghanistan, launched after theSeptember 11, 2001 attacks. According to parts of the deal made public, thePentagon would have pulled about 5,000 of its roughly 13,000 or so troopsfrom five bases across Afghanistan by early next year.
The announcement by tweet appears abruptly to end, at least for now, apainstaking diplomatic process led for nearly a year by Zalmay Khalilzad,the Afghan-born veteran US diplomat who held nine rounds of talks with theTaliban, usually in Qatar.