Face of Nation : Donald Trump says he’s cancelled peace talks with Taliban leaders after the group said it was behind an attack in Kabul that killed a US soldier and 11 others.Mr Trump said he had planned a secret meeting with the Taliban’s “major leaders” on Sunday at Camp David and with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. He said on Twitter that meeting had been cancelled and peace talks with the Taliban suspended.
The US president charged that “unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they [the Taliban] admitted to an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people”.
“I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations,” the US president added. “What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?” Two NATO soldiers, one US and one Romanian, are among 12 people killed in the car bombing at a security post near NATO’s Resolute Support mission headquarters in Kabul on Thursday.
Taliban fighters, who now control more territory than at any time since 2001, launched fresh assaults on the northern cities of Kunduz and Pul-e Khumri over the past week and carried out two major suicide bombings in the capital Kabul.
One of the blasts, a suicide attack in Kabul on Thursday, took the life of US Army Sergeant 1st Class Elis A. Barreto Ortiz, 34, from Puerto Rico, bringing the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 16.
A spike in attacks by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan has been “particularly unhelpful” to peace efforts there, a senior US military commander said on Saturday as he visited neighbouring Pakistan, where many Taliban militants are based. If realised, the summit would have been the latest high-profile, high-stakes diplomacy by the mogul-turned-president, who is fond of dramatic gestures.
Afghanistan’s internationally recognised president, Ashraf Ghani, had been outspoken in his criticism of the shape of the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, who have refused to negotiate with his government. Mr Khalilzad had said in Kabul that he had reached an agreement in principle with the Taliban.
According to parts of the draft deal that had been made public, the Pentagon would pull about 5,000 of the roughly 13,000 US troops from five bases across Afghanistan by early next year.
The insurgents, in turn, will renounce Al-Qaeda, promise to fight the Islamic State group and stop jihadists using Afghanistan as a safe haven. The fight against Al-Qaeda was the initial reason for the US-led war that overthrew the Taliban following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States.
But US public opinion has soured on nearly two decades of war and Mr Trump, after initially being persuaded to reinforce US troops, has said that the United States should not be involved in “endless” war. Mr Trump had been uncharacteristically reticent about Afghanistan in recent weeks, with all eyes on whether he would approve a final deal.
