The Afghan Taliban rejected reports in the Pakistani media that they were prepared to resume meetings with US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Islamabad and repeated their refusal to deal directly with the Afghan government.
Pakistani newspapers and television stations reported that a meeting in Islamabad was in prospect following discussions between Khalilzad and Pakistani officials, including Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, on Friday.
Senior Taliban leaders said that regional powers including Pakistan had approached them and wanted them to meet the US delegation in Islamabad, and also include the Afghan government in the peace process, but that the approaches had been rejected.
Photo: AFP
“We wanted to make it clear that we will not hold any meeting with Zalmay Khalilzad in Islamabad,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid in a statement.
Talks between the two sides have stalled after the Taliban accused Khalilzad of straying from the agreed agenda. It is unclear when they might resume.
“We have made it clear again and again that we would never hold any meeting with the Afghan government as we know that they are not capable of addressing our demands,” said one senior Taliban leader, on condition of anonymity.
The US says any settlement in Afghanistan must be between the internationally recognized Afghan government and the Taliban, who have so far refused to talk to an administration that they describe as an illegitimate puppet regime.
The Taliban leader said that peace talks with the US delegation could resume if they were assured that only three issues would be discussed — a US withdrawal from Afghanistan, an exchange of prisoners and a lifting of the ban on the movement of Taliban leaders.
Khalilzad arrived in Islamabad on Thursday and met with Khan, as well as Pakistani Minister of Foreign Affairs Shah Mehmood Qureshi and other officials.
“The two sides reviewed developments post-Abu Dhabi to take the Afghan peace process forward,” a Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement said.
An Afghan Taliban delegation had a round of talks last month with US officials in Abu Dhabi.
The statement did not give any further details on the talks, but several local TV channels reported that Pakistan agreed to host the next round of talks between the Afghan Taliban and the US in Islamabad.
Khalilzad, an Afghan-born veteran US diplomat who served as former US president George W. Bush’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN, was named by US President Donald Trump’s administration four months ago as a special envoy to negotiate peace.
Washington has long been pushing Islamabad to lean on Taliban leaders, whom it says are based in Pakistan, to bring them to the negotiating table.
It often accuses the south Asian nation of sheltering Taliban leaders, an accusation Islamabad denies.
The US, which had more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan during the first term of former US President Barack Obama, withdrew most of them in 2014, but still keeps about 14,000 there.
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