Taleban meets China special rep in Beijing
‘35 civilians’ killed
KABUL, Sept 23, (RTRS): A Taleban delegation met China’s special representative for Afghanistan in Beijing to discuss the group’s peace talks with the United States, a spokesman for the Islamist insurgency said.
The meeting, on Sunday, comes after US President Donald Trump’s 11th-hour cancellation earlier this month of negotiations with the Taleban, which many had hoped would pave the way to a broader peace deal with the Afghan government and ending an 18-year war.
The Taleban’s nine-member delegation travelled to Beijing and met Deng Xijun, China’s special representative for Afghanistan, said Suhail Shaheen, the Afghan group’s spokesman in Qatar, on his official Twitter account on Sunday.
Qatar was where the Taleban and the United States held peace talks over the past year.
“The Chinese special representative said the US-Taleban deal is a good framework for the peaceful solution of the Afghan issue and they support it,” Shaheen wrote.
Mullah Baradar, the Taleban delegation’s leader, said they had held a dialogue and reached a “comprehensive deal”, Shaheen tweeted.
“Now, if the US president cannot stay committed to his words and breaks his promise, then he is responsible for any kind of distraction and bloodshed in Afghanistan,” Baradar said, according to Shaheen.
Speaking in Beijing on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang confirmed that Baradar and several of his assistants came to China for exchanges in recent days.
Situation
“China’s relevant foreign ministry official exchanged opinions with Baradar regarding the situation in Afghanistan and promoting Afghanistan’s peace and reconciliation process,” Geng said.
Afghanistan will this coming week hold its fourth presidential elections since US-led forces toppled the Taleban from power in 2001.
Those elections have gained importance since the collapse of the peace talks, as the negotiations could have led to the creation of an interim government, now a more distant prospect.
In June, before the peace talks fell apart, another Taleban team went to China to meet with the government.
At the time, a foreign ministry spokesman said China supported Afghans resolving their problems themselves through talks, and the visit was an important part of China promoting such peace talks.
China’s far western region of Xinjiang shares a short border with Afghanistan.
China has long worried about links between militant groups and what it says are Islamist extremists operating in Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur people, who speak a Turkic language.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sunday called on all countries to resist China’s demands to repatriate ethnic Uighurs, saying Beijing’s campaign in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang was an “attempt to erase its own citizens”.
Geng said Pompeo had slandered China, and that its policies in Xinjiang were fundamentally no different than what other countries had done to guard against extremism and terrorism.
UN experts and activists say at least 1 million Uighurs, and members of other largely Muslim minority groups, have been detained in camps in the remote Xinjiang region.
China, a close ally of Pakistan, has been deepening its economic and political ties with Kabul and is also using its influence to try to bring the two uneasy neighbours closer.
Also:
KABUL: At least 35 civilians attending a wedding party were killed and 13 people wounded by explosions and gunfire during a raid by Afghan government forces on a nearby militant hideout, two officials in southern Helmand province said on Monday.
The officials said the house being used by the Taleban to train suicide bombers was located adjacent to the bride’s home that came under fire during Sunday night’s attack.
A senior Afghan Defence Ministry official said the raid was against “a foreign terrorist group actively engaged in organizing terrorist attacks”.
“During the operation, a large warehouse of the terrorists’ supplies and equipment was also demolished,” the official said.
A second Afghan Defence Ministry official said a foreign militant detonated a suicide vest that killed him and others around him, including a woman.
“The compound was being used to train men and women who were willing to become suicide bombers, we raided it. We are aware that civilians were injured in the attack,” he said.
Attaullah Afghan, a member of the Helmand provincial council member, said 35 civilians people attending the wedding party near to the attack site in the Khaksar area of Musa Qala district were killed and 13 were injured.
A second provincial council member, Abdul Majid Akhundzadah, said 40 people, all civilians.
The Defence Ministry said the Taleban hideout was also used by foreign nationals working for the hardline Islamist group.
“As a result of a joint operation in Musa Qala district of Helmand, 22 Taleban members were killed and 14 others arrested,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that five Pakistanis and one Bangladeshi national were among those arrested.
Bombing, air strikes and ground clashes between the US backed Afghan forces and hardline Islamist groups have intensified following the collapse of the US-Taleban talks and ahead of the presidential polls next week.
A senior US defence official in Afghanistan said the operation was aimed against al Qaeda fighters but did not give any details about civilian casualties.
The United States in 2001 sent forces to Afghanistan to oust Taleban leaders after they refused to hand over members of the al Qaeda militant group behind the Sept 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Since then, the US forces have supported the Afghan forces in war against the al Qaeda, Taleban and Islamic State militant groups that recruit Afghans and foreigners who mount attacks against the Westernbacked Afghan government and foreign forces.