Pompeo pushes peace talks on his Kabul visit
kabul — US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Monday, promised support for President Ashraf Ghani’s bid to start peace talks with the Taleban and repeated the United States itself would be willing to join the talks.
The visit, coming at the end of a tour of Asian countries including North Korea and Vietnam, was Pompeo’s first to Afghanistan since he became Secretary of State in April.
He said the strategy announced last year by US President Donald Trump of sending more troops to increase battlefield pressure on the Taleban and push them towards negotiations “sends a message to the Taleban that they cannot wait us out”.
Pompeo’s visit follows one by the State Department’s top diplomat for South and Central Asia, Alice Wells, who said this month that pressure was building on the Taleban to respond to Ghani’s offer for peace talks.
Standing with him at a news conference in the presidential palace in Kabul, Ghani, who earlier this year offered peace talks without preconditions, said it would be necessary to move with caution.
“If we think only in one day a 40 year-crisis can be ended we are being unrealistic,” he said.
Following a three-day ceasefire during last month’s Eid holiday, the Taleban demanded the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan.
However Pompeo repeated an offer for the United States to take part directly in talks with the Taleban, who have rejected talks with what they consider an illegitimate Western-backed government in Kabul and demanded direct talks with Washington. —