Taliban delegation met US envoy during visit to Islamabad

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: A Taliban delegation met US special representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Thursday, two sources told Reuters, the first known contact between the two sides since US President Donald Trump called off talks last month.

Sources cautioned the meeting, which lasted more than an hour, did not represent a resumption of formal negotiations.

“The Taliban officials held a meeting with Zalmay Khalilzad... all I can tell you is that Pakistan played a big role in it to convince them how important it was for the peace process,” a senior Pakistan government official told Reuters, declining to be named as he was not authorised to speak publicly about the matter.

He added the contact, which was confirmed by a second source, did not involve formal negotiations on the peace process, but were interactions aimed at building confidence.

He declined to elaborate further on the content of the discussions.

The US Embassy in Islamabad and State Department in Washington declined to comment on whether a meeting had taken place.

A State Department spokesperson said that Khalilzad had spent ‘several days’ in Islamabad this week for consultations with authorities in Pakistan. The spokesperson said Khalilzad’s meetings while in Islamabad did not represent a re-start to the Afghan peace process.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, would not confirm or deny that Taliban had met Khalilzad, adding that the Taliban delegation was still in Islamabad for meetings on Friday.

Trump halted the talks with the Taliban, aimed at striking a deal allowing US and other foreign troops to withdraw in exchange for Taliban security guarantees, following the death of a US solder and 11 others in a Taliban bomb attack in Kabul.

The Taliban delegation led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the group’s founders, had earlier met Pakistan’s foreign minister in Islamabad on Thursday and both sides called for a resumption of the talks as soon as possible. — Reuters