Washington, November 29
The US and Afghan Taliban have resumed peace talks, President Donald Trump has revealed as he made his first visit to the war-torn country on an unannounced trip to meet American soldiers for the Thanksgiving holiday.
During the brief appearance at the Bagram Airfield, Trump served turkey to soldiers, posed for photographs and met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. After nine rounds of negotiations with the Taliban, President Trump abruptly cancelled peace talks in September after a US soldier was killed in a suicide attack in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
The secretive visit to Afghanistan on Thursday for Thanksgiving came a week after a prisoner swap with the Taliban aimed at resuming peace negotiations to end the 18-year-long war.
As part of the swap deal, the Taliban freed two Western academics who had been held hostage since 2016 — American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks — in exchange for three imprisoned senior militants.
“Yes,” Trump told a small group of reporters at the Bagram Air Field when asked to confirm whether the US had restarted discussions with the Taliban after calling the peace talks “dead”.
Trump said the terms of the deal would have to include a Taliban ceasefire.
“The Taliban wants to make a deal and we’re meeting with them and we’re saying it has to be a ceasefire and they didn’t want to do a ceasefire and now they do want to do a ceasefire. I believe it’ll probably work out that way,” he said.
Afghan officials have long demanded a ceasefire but the Taliban, who now control more territory than at any point since they were ousted in 2001, have refused to hold direct talks with the government until a US deal is agreed.
Trump said the US had made tremendous progress over the past six months and had been drawing down its troops at the same time.
“We’re going to stay until such time as we have a deal or we have total victory and they (Taliban) want to make a deal very badly,” he told reporters during a hastily-arranged bilateral meeting with Afghan President Ghani at the airfield, the largest US base in Afghanistan. — PTI
‘Way too early’
- The Taliban said on Friday it was ‘way too early’ to speak of resuming direct talks with Washington, a day after President Donald Trump suggested negotiations to end America’s longest war were back on track
- The statement from insurgent spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid sounded a note of caution after Trump said during a lightning visit to Bagram Airfield on Thursday that the Taliban ‘wants to make a deal’ AFP
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2OweZ5l
via IFTTT https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
No comments: