US President Donald Trump had planned a secret meeting with Afghan Taliban in Camp David
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*WASHINGTON - **US President Donald Trump had planned a secret meeting with Afghan Taliban in Camp David, he himself revealed in series of tweets.*
*US President Donald Trump has cancelled ‘peace negotiations’ with the Taliban after the group said they were behind an attack in Kabul that killed 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 an end to 18 years of war.
Kabul has been gripped by a surge in deadly violence even after the US and the insurgents reached an agreement “in principle” that would see the US pull thousands of troops from Afghanistan in return for various Taliban security promises.
Any deal would have needed final approval from Trump, who has said that he wants to end American involvement in Afghanistan, launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks. According to parts of the deal made public, the Pentagon would have pulled about 5,000 of its roughly 13,000 or so troops from five bases across Afghanistan by early next year.
The announcement by tweet appears abruptly to end, at least for now, a painstaking diplomatic process led for nearly a year by Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born veteran US diplomat who held nine rounds of talks with the Taliban, usually in Qatar.
