WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump has indicated peace negotiationswith the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan are back on track and vowedagain to withdraw American troops from the country, reported Voice ofAmerica (VOA).
“You know we’re pulling way down in Afghanistan. We’re working on anagreement now with the Taliban. Let’s see what happens,” Trump told FoxNews on Friday in a telephone call to the programme “Fox and Friends.” Hedid not elaborate further.
His comments come several days after the Taliban released an American andAustralian professor in exchange for the release of three Taliban prisonersby the Afghan government. The Taliban also released 10 Afghan soldiers thisweek.
It was widely thought that the release of American Kevin King andAustralian Timothy Weeks, who had been held hostage since August 2016,could lead to a resumption of US-Taliban negotiations.
The US also praised the release of the professors, King and Weeks, withTrump tweeting on Tuesday, “Let’s hope this leads to more good things onthe peace front like a ceasefire that will help end this long war.”
VOA asked for Taliban spokesperson’s, Zabihullah Mujahid, reaction toTrump’s remarks on Friday. “It is too early to say anything about it,” hesaid.
September talks
In early September, Trump abruptly called off the yearlong dialogue citinga string of Taliban attacks in Kabul that killed among others an Americansoldier. Trump defended his decision in Fox News interview on Friday.
“The last time I was supposed to have an agreement, then they (Taliban)thought when they came over, they thought it would be good to kill peopleso they could negotiate from a position of strength,” Trump explained.
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At the time when Washington suspended the talks with the Taliban, the twoadversaries in the 18-year-old Afghan war had come close to signing anagreement to set the stage for an American military drawdown in return forinsurgent counterterrorism guarantees and commitments to enter intointra-Afghan peace talks.
Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad hastravelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan since the collapse of thenegotiations, but the State Department stressed after the first trip thatthe “meetings do not represent a re-start of the Afghan Peace Process.”
Khalilzad said on Friday he was hopeful the prisoner swap would lead to “areduction in violence and rapid progress” toward a political settlementinvolving the Afghan government, the Taliban and other Afghan leaders. “TheAfghan people yearn for peace and security, and we stand with them,”tweeted the Afghan-born American diplomat.
However, Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen earlier this week rejected asuntrue reports that his group had agreed to engage in direct negotiationswith the Afghan government in the wake of the successful prisoner swap.
The Taliban remains strongly opposed to any peace talks with the Kabuladministration. A report issued this week found that attacks by the Talibanwere deadlier than those committed by any other group in 2018. The report,the 2019 Global Terrorism Index, found that the militant group tooksignificantly more lives than ISIS did last year.
Steve Killelea, the executive chairman of the Institute for Economics andPeace, which produced the report, said the Taliban “now account for 38% ofall terrorist deaths globally,” which he believes “underscores thedifficulty with the current conflict” in Afghanistan. -APP/AFP
