US defends plans for Trump-Taliban meeting at Camp David
The US has defended plans for a meeting between President Donald Trump and Taliban’s leaders at Camp David as prospects of a deal shatter between the two sides.
Hours after Trump called off the secret meeting, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told NBC on Sunday that "it was appropriate to have the Taliban set foot on Camp David."
"The president ultimately made the decision that if we could get that, if we could get commitments and then put in place a verification regime that would give us confidence that we could observe that those commitments were being honored, that it was a useful effort to try and get all of those parties in one place so that we could have serious conversations about how to reduce America's risk so that there won't be other secretaries of state that have to travel to Dover to go see these amazing American heroes who have given so much for our country," said the US secretary of state.
Reports of such a meeting faced backlash from lawmakers, including Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney, tweeting that "no member of the Taliban should set foot" at Camp David "ever."
"Never should leaders of a terrorist organization that hasn’t renounced 9/11 and continues in evil be allowed in our great country. NEVER. Full stop," said Illinois Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger.
Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy also asked whether the broken deal could gain legitimacy just by being signed on the US soil.
....only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019
"How on earth would legitimacy of a deal in Afghanistan been enhanced by it being signed in America rather than Afghanistan?" he tweeted, asking what the point was "of dragging [Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani and Taliban leaders all the way to Camp David?"
US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad presented a draft US-Taliban agreement to Ghani at the beginning of the month, which outlined plans for a US withdrawal from the country in exchange for a Taliban pledge not to plot attacks on the United States and its allies.
Prior to the cancellation of negotiations, American officials had expressed hope that an end to the longest US war was near.
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