US envoy to resume peace talks with Taliban in Qatar: State Department

The US says its special representative for Afghanistan is set to restart talks with the Taliban militant group, a week after President Donald Trump paid a surprise visit to the war-torn country and hinted at a resumption of the negotiations in Qatar.

US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad arrived in the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday to discuss suggestions for the resumption of peace negotiations with the militant group, according to a State Department statement.

He met with Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani and other Afghan leaders to follow up on Trump’s November 28 top-secret visit to US troops in the East Asian state, where the American president claimed Taliban wanted to “make a deal.” In Kabul, Trump also supported “accelerated efforts to get all parties to intra-Afghan negotiations.”

The Taliban initially said it was “too early” to speak of resuming the talks, but later said they “were ready” to rejoin the diplomatic process with the US in Qatar.

In Kabul, Khalilzad and Ghani exchanged views on the peace process, including “the prospect for a ceasefire as a result of a peace agreement and the issue of Taliban’s sanctuaries outside Afghanistan,” Afghanistan’s presidency office tweeted.

The US president ended yearlong talks with the Taliban in September, when an agreement appeared imminent. He said at the time that the decision to end the talks was in response to a deadly bomb attack by the militants that killed 12 people in the Afghan capital on September 5, including an American soldier.

Taliban says ‘way too early’ to speak of negotiations with US

The Afghan Taliban militant group says it is “way too early” to speak of restarting direct negotiations with the United States.

According to a statement by the US State Department on Wednesday, Khalilzad will then fly to Doha, where the militant group maintains a political office, and “rejoin talks with the Taliban to discuss steps that could lead to intra-Afghan negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the war, specifically a reduction in violence that leads to a ceasefire.”

The Ghani administration had been kept out of those talks. The Taliban have been saying they do not recognize the Kabul government, calling it a puppet of the US.

Trump’s unexpected visit to Afghanistan came after the release of two Western hostages by the Taliban last month as part of a swap deal with the Afghan government.

Ghani has proposed an initiative of his own to open direct talks between Kabul and the militant group, which still control large swathes of territory.

The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and overthrew a Taliban regime in power at the time, vowing to bring stability to the war-ravaged nation.

However, US forces have remained bogged down there through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump.

More than 14,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan and Trump has repeatedly expressed his frustration with their continued deployment.

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