2024 RT Amination Banner.gif

China Daily

Asia Pacific> Asia News> Content
Friday, November 29, 2019, 17:59
After Trump's Kabul visit, Taliban ready to resume talks
By Reuters
Friday, November 29, 2019, 17:59 By Reuters

US President Donald Trump addresses members of the military during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit, Nov 28, 2019, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (ALEX BRANDON / AP)

KABUL — The Taliban said on Friday they were ready to restart peace talks with the United States, a day after President Donald Trump made a surprise visit to US troops in Afghanistan and said he believed the radical group would agree to a ceasefire.

We are hoping that Trump’s visit to Afghanistan will prove that he is serious to start talks again. We don’t think he has not much of a choice.

Senior Taliban commander 

Trump’s Thanksgiving Day visit was his first to Afghanistan since becoming president and came a week after a prisoner swap between Washington and Kabul that has raised hopes for a long elusive peace deal to end the 18-year-long war.

“The Taliban wants to make a deal and we are meeting with them,” Trump told reporters after arriving in Afghanistan on Thursday.

“We say it has to be a ceasefire and they didn’t want to do a ceasefire and now they want to do a ceasefire, I believe. It will probably work out that way.”

Taliban leaders have told Reuters that the group has been holding meetings with senior US officials in Doha since last weekend, adding they could soon resume formal peace talks.

ALSO READ: After Trump's Kabul visit, Taliban ready to resume talks

On Friday, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the hardline Islamist insurgent group, said they were “ready to restart the talks” that collapsed after Trump had called them off earlier this year.

“Our stance is still the same. If peace talks start, it will be resumed from the stage where it had stopped,” Mujahid told Reuters.

Trump canceled peace negotiations in September after the militant group claimed responsibility for an attack in Kabul that killed 12 people, including an American soldier.

“We are hoping that Trump’s visit to Afghanistan will prove that he is serious to start talks again. We don’t think he has not much of a choice,” said a senior Taliban commander on conditions of anonymity.

There are currently about 13,000 US forces as well as thousands of other NATO troops in Afghanistan, 18 years after an invasion by a US-led coalition following the Sept 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

About 2,400 US service members have been killed in the course of the Afghan conflict.

READ MORE: US, Taliban close to deal as fighting intensifies

A draft accord agreed in September would have thousands of American troops withdrawn in exchange for guarantees that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for militant attacks on the United States or its allies.

Still, many US officials doubt the Taliban could be relied upon to prevent al Qaeda from again plotting attacks against the United States from Afghan soil.

Share this story

CHINA DAILY
HONG KONG NEWS
OPEN
Please click in the upper right corner to open it in your browser !