close
Thursday March 28, 2024

Taliban say peace impossible until evacuation of foreign forces

By News Desk & Mushtaq Yusufzai
August 31, 2019

DOHA/PESHAWAR: The spokesman for political office of the Taliban, Sohail Shaheen commenting on the US President Donald Trump’s statement said it is impossible to maintain peace in Afghanistan until the occupied forces are in the country.

Sohail Shaheen said the Taliban and US delegation sat for talks on the evacuation of foreign forces from Afghanistan. He said they had been sacrificing precious lives to expel American and international troops from the country and nothing less would be accepted.

During an interview with the Fox News, Trump told that the government has decided to reduce the number of on-ground soldiers in Afghanistan up to 8,600. He added the US will maintain minimum presence in the war-torn country and it may last forever.

It is to mention that President Trump’s statement came while the talks between Taliban and the US are in final phase. The ninth round of the latest talks lasted at least 16 hours on Thursday and continued on Friday.

While talking to the BBC, Taliban political office spokesman Sohail Shaheen said the main agenda of the talks is that the US and Nato forces should leave Afghanistan. Sohail Shaheen said the talks are carried out in a pre-decided framework, which certainly has differences and when things will be discussed, everything will come into the light.

The Taliban spokesman told that the talks with the US are in the final phase and consensus will be reached within days. He said this round of talks may be the last but not all issues are consensually agreed by both parties.

Mushtaq Yousafzai adds: The peace talks between the United States and the Afghan Taliban have reached a deadlock over some issues. The Taliban feared that they may not be able to overcome the remaining hurdles in the ongoing session of the peace negotiations in Qatar.

“Let me repeat it again that we had resolved most of the issues with the US negotiating team and were now left with very minor problems. We were really close to the peace accord and even planning to select the date and venue for signing it but suddenly we got stuck in some minor issues,” explained one senior Taliban leader privy to the peace talks.

Pleading anonymity, he said the negotiating teams of the two sides held very lengthy sessions in the past few days in a bid to convince each other if they could develop consensus on the remaining issues.

According to Taliban sources, the sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, went till early morning but didn’t yield results. “On the basis of our experience in the peace talks, you can’t trust Americans. They can easily change their stance,” he alleged.

Though the Taliban officially didn’t comment about hurdles in the peace talks, some of their insiders claimed that recent statements of US President Donald Trump, allegedly saying that US would not withdraw all their forces from Afghanistan, had annoyed the Taliban.

According to Taliban leadership, US negotiating team had made a commitment with them and the two sides would announce a ceasefire and then America will withdraw 8000-10,000 troops from Afghanistan in the first phase.

The remaining troops, Taliban claimed, would be sent back from Afghanistan in one and a half years, if the agreement was signed. “Besides this, there are some issues which I can disclose right now. Our top leadership is working on it and if those issues were not resolved in the current session, which I don’t expect, another session would be called later,” said the Taliban leader.

He said US negotiating team wanted to keep quiet on some points in the proposed agreement or avoid making them public. But Taliban said they agree with them and insisted that all points of the proposed peace accord must be clear and properly documented in the agreement.

Taliban, however, didn’t mention the points which they wanted to be “clear and documented” in the likely peace agreement. “The two negotiating teams are constantly engaged in talks to remove the hurdles that delayed the peace accord. We are hopeful that they would find out possible solution,” he added.