KABUL – President Donald Trump and his national security team had anhour-long, classified meeting on Afghanistan on Friday, US media reported.
The meeting at the Pentagon included US Vice President Mike Pence, JosephDunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State MikePompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Trump’s national security adviser JohnBolton, among others, the report said.
The session was a classified briefing about Afghanistan, according to aWhite House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss thesubject of the private briefing, according to the Associated Press.
The Pentagon has been developing plans to withdraw as many as half of the14,000 troops still in Afghanistan.
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Patrick Shanahan, acting secretary of defense, said he has no orders toreduce the US troop presence, although officials say that is at the top ofthe Taliban’s list of demands in exploratory peace negotiations.
This comes after the US Department of State said on Wednesday that theTaliban in talks with the US negotiators made meaningful progress in Qatartalks.
