‘US envoy meets new Taliban chief negotiator’
US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad has reportedly held a meeting with the Taliban militant group’s new chief negotiator in the Qatari capital of Doha ahead of planned peace talks between the Afghan government and the group.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said the head of the Taliban’s political office, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and the new head of the Taliban’s negotiating team, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, had met with Khalilzad and Qatar’s deputy prime minister in Doha on Monday.
“Issues related to the prisoners’ release and immediate start of the intra-Afghan talks were discussed,” Naeem said.
Talks with American officials had for the last two years been led by Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, who signed a deal with Washington earlier this year.
But a new, 21-member team would be headed by Haqqani, a senior militant leader and the Taliban’s former shadow “chief justice.” The Taliban said that the team had been changed to give it power to take decisions on the spot.
The Afghan government last week released the remaining Taliban prisoners under the deal between the US and the Taliban. The Afghan government had been hesitant because some of the captured militants had been involved in serious crimes. The US was pressuring Kabul to release the militants.
Under the deal with the US, the Taliban agreed to stop their attacks on international forces in return for the US military’s phased withdrawal from Afghanistan and the prisoner swap with the government.
The Afghan government was a party neither to the negotiations nor to the deal, but it has been acting in accordance with its terms, including by agreeing to free the Taliban prisoners.
Official data shows that bombings and other assaults by the Taliban have surged 70 percent since the militant group signed the deal with the United States in February.
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