Trump talks turkey

President says ceasefire on table in meetings with Taliban

US President Donald Trump paid a surprise Thanksgiving visit to Afghanistan, where he announced the United States and Taliban had been engaged in ongoing peace talks and said he believed the Taliban wanted a ceasefire.

In his first trip to the site of America’s longest war, Mr Trump arrived at Bagram Air Field shortly after 8.30pm local time on Thursday and spent more than three hours on the ground, serving turkey, thanking the troops and sitting down with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani before leaving just after midnight.

Mr Trump appeared in good spirits as he was escorted around the base by heavily armed soldiers.

His first stop was a dining hall, where he plated turkey and sat down for a meal. But he said he only tasted the mashed potatoes before he was pulled away for photos.

“I never got the turkey,” he told the troops, “a gorgeous piece of turkey.”

During his visit, Mr Trump said the US and Taliban had been engaged in peace talks and insisted the Taliban wanted to make a deal after heavy US fire in recent months.

“We’re meeting with them,” he said. “And we’re saying it has to be a ceasefire. And they don’t want to do a ceasefire, but now they do want to do a ceasefire, I believe ... and we’ll see what happens.”

The trip came after Mr Trump abruptly broke off peace talks with the Taliban in September, cancelling a secret meeting with Taliban and Afghan leaders at the Camp David presidential retreat after a particularly deadly spate of violence, capped by a bombing in Kabul that killed 12 people, including an American soldier.

That ended a nearly yearlong effort by the US to reach a political settlement with the Taliban, the group that protected al-Qaeda extremists in Afghanistan, prompting US military action after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.