US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to fulfill with Taliban officers in Doha, Qatar, in an effort to revive the collapsing peace deal between the 2 events, regardless of failure to succeed in a separate take care of the Afghan authorities.
Pompeo is about to sit down with chief Taliban negotiator Mullah Baradar and different officers from the militant group on Monday so as “to press the Taliban to proceed to adjust to the settlement signed final month,” State Division spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus mentioned in a press release.
Whereas the US and Taliban reached an settlement final month to start drawing down American forces in trade for a discount in assaults, the absence of a separate deal between the militant group — which controls greater than half of Afghanistan — and President Ashraf Ghani’s authorities has been a sticking level. The 2 sides clashed over the discharge of prisoners, with Kabul demanding ensures the Taliban detainees wouldn’t return to the battlefield as soon as launched.
Additional complicating the difficulty is Ghani’s rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who has additionally claimed to be the rightful chief of Afghanistan since September’s election. Pompeo was in Kabul on Monday trying to mediate between the 2 would-be presidents within the hope of choosing a negotiating group to characterize the federal government in talks with the Taliban.
Negotiations for the discharge of the prisoners lastly started on Sunday, with the Taliban returning to the desk after initially refusing to talk to the Afghan authorities till all 5,000 prisoners talked about within the preliminary settlement with the US had been launched.
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Below the phrases of the take care of the Taliban, the US will take away hundreds of troops from the nation over the following 135 days, bringing its complete presence down from 13,000 to eight,600 in a course of which has reportedly already begun.
The US departure has not been stopped, regardless of continued assaults by the Taliban on Afghan forces — not less than one in all which led the US to conduct a “defensive” airstrike in response.
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