US won’t participate in talks in Russia about Afghanistan

WASHINGTON >> The United States has rejected an invitation to join Russia-led talks on Afghanistan because they are unlikely to help bring peace, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday, as the Trump administration prepared to appoint a diplomatic veteran as a new special envoy for the war-battered nation.

Russia said the Taliban will be joining the Sept. 4 talks in Moscow, along with representatives of several neighboring countries. It will be one of the insurgent group’s biggest diplomatic forays since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The State Department official said that as a matter of principle, the U.S. supports Afghan-led efforts to advance a peace settlement. And, based on previous Russialed meetings on Afghanistan, the Moscow talks are “unlikely to yield any progress toward that end.” The spokesman was not authorized to be quoted by name and requested anonymity.

That decision comes as the Taliban escalates attacks across Afghanistan. It has refused direct talks with Kabul, even as it seeks to raise its diplomatic profile in the region and calls for talks with the U.S. which it views as the real power behind the Afghan government. The insurgent group has yet to respond to President Ashraf Ghani’s offer earlier this week of a conditional cease-fire for the duration of the Eid al-Adha religious holiday that began Tuesday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo intends to appoint a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, to a special envoy post that would deal with the Afghan-Taliban peace process and Afghanistan’s integration into the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, according to two U.S. officials and a congressional aide briefed on the plan.

Despite escalating violence in Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander there said Wednesday the U.S.-led coalition sees hope in Taliban statements in recent months indicating interest in a negotiations to end the 17-year war, and Afghan public and religious clerics’ desire for peace.

“We have an unprecedented window of opportunity for peace now,” Gen. John Nicholson told Pentagon reporters from Kabul.