Stop the killing, Taliban urged as Trump pulls plug on peace deal

Kabul: The Afghan government on Sunday urged the Taliban to stop fighting and start direct talks with Kabul after the US president pulled the plug on a long-awaited peace deal.

Donald Trump had planned separate secret meetings at his Camp David retreat on Sunday with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Taliban leaders. The aim was to put the finishing touches to an agreement reached after lengthy negotiations in Doha, leading to the withdrawal of thousands of US troops in return for Taliban security pledges.

Instead Trump scrapped the meetings after a Taliban attack on Thursday near the US Embassy in Kabul killed 12 people, one of them a US soldier.

“What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they only made it worse,” Trump said.

Ghani’s government, which has so far been left out of talks on the Taliban’s insistence, said it wanted a “dignified peace.”

Presidential spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said: “We have always emphasized that real peace is possible only when the Taliban stop killing Afghans, accept a cease-fire and get ready for direct talks with the Afghan



government.

“We do not have conditions for talks, but peace has conditions. They have to stop the killings. They have intensified the violence. How is it possible to sit in talks and continue violence? That is a clear signal that the Taliban are not interested in peace.”

All peace talks are now on hold, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday, and special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad had been recalled to Washington to chart the path forward.

“If the Taliban don’t behave, if they don’t deliver on the commitments that they’ve made to us now for weeks, and in some cases months, the president is not going to reduce the pressure,” Pompeo said.

“We’re not going to reduce our support for the Afghan security forces that have fought so hard there. We’re not just going to withdraw because there’s a timeline.”

The former UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said the Taliban’s attacks had jeopardized the peace process and it would take time to revive it.

“Is this only a brief interruption? I don’t think so,” he said. “It could take a long time to get the process back on track. The latest Taliban attacks were simply too much and put the entire process at risk.”