KABUL – The Taliban held talks with US officials in Qatar on ending theAfghan conflict last week, the militants confirmed Monday, but said noagreement was reached on “any issue”.
The statement comes a day after US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad expressed hopesin Kabul that a peace deal to end the 17-year war could be struck beforethe Afghan presidential election, scheduled for April.
Senior Taliban officials met with a “high-ranking” US delegation in Qataron November 14, 15 and 16, the militant group said in a WhatsApp message,without mentioning Khalilzad. The US has made no statement about the talks.
The Taliban has a political office in the capital Doha that serves as ade-facto embassy.
“These were preliminary talks and no agreement was reached on any issue,”spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.
“We want to reassure our Mujahideen and Muslim nation that therepresentatives of the Islamic Emirate will never agree to anything thatdoes not adhere to Islamic principles.”
US envoy Khalilzad was in Kabul after a second round of regional meetingswith top Afghan government officials to coordinate efforts on ending theconflict.
In a meeting Monday, Khalilzad told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the”ground for intra-Afghan talks is more ready than any other time”,according to a presidential palace statement.
The second Taliban-US meeting in as many months come as the militants stepup attacks on beleaguered Afghan security forces, which are suffering anunprecedented level of casualties.
The death toll among Afghan soldiers and police is nearing 30,000 since thestart of 2015, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani revealed this month — afigure far higher than anything previously acknowledged.
In a recent report, the US Special Inspector General for AfghanistanReconstruction (SIGAR) cited the NATO mission in Kabul as saying thissummer’s toll had been worse than ever for Afghan forces.
Khalilzad told reporters on Sunday that he recognised the “complexity” ofthe conflict, but insisted he wanted to “make as much progress as possibleas soon as possible”.
His comments underscore an apparent increasing sense of urgency in theWhite House and among American diplomats for a peace deal to be donequickly.
Washington is facing competition from Moscow, which this month hosted aninternational gathering on Afghanistan that was attended by the Taliban. -APP/AFP