Pompeo acts over US troops death claim
United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called and spoken with the Taliban’s chief negotiator, a spokesman for the insurgents said yesterday, amid a raging controversy in Washington over when President Donald Trump was told about US intelligence that Russia was paying the Taliban to kill US and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.
However, it was not known whether there was any mention during the call of allegations that some Taliban militants received money to kill US and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.
Pompeo and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar held a video conference late on Monday in which Pompeo pressed the insurgents to reduce violence in Afghanistan and discussed ways of moving a peace deal signed between the US and the Taliban in February forward, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen tweeted.
The call comes as the US peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, is touring the region in efforts to advance the deal. He was in Uzbekistan yesterday and was expected in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, later in the day or on
Wednesday, and was also to travel to Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office.
Khalilzad is also holding video conferences with Kabul leaders rather than travelling to the Afghan capital because of the dangers of Covid-19, according to a US State Department statement. Afghanistan’s dilapidated health system is grappling with the pandemic, with the number of infections thought to far outnumber the official tally of over 31,000 cases, including 733 deaths.
The implementation of the USTaliban deal has reached critical stage, with the Taliban and
Kabul’s leaders expected to hold negotiations on a framework for a post-war Afghanistan that would end the fighting and bring the insurgents into the country’s political arena.
The talks are expected to begin sometime in July – if both sides abide by a promise laid out in the US-Taliban deal to release thousands of prisoners. The agreement calls for Kabul to release 5000 imprisoned Taliban while the insurgents would release 1,000 government and military personnel they hold captive. But the prisoner releases have been marked by delays; Kabul has so far released 3500 and the Taliban have freed about 700.
Shaheen tweeted that Pompeo and Baradar discussed the ‘‘implementation of the agreement, foreign troop withdrawal, prisoner release, start of intra-Afghan dialogue and reduction in (military) operations.’’
The US State Department has not commented on the video conference.
Pompeo said Washington wanted to see a reduction in violence, according to the tweet.
The Taliban have denied the allegations that they were paid by Russia to kill Americans in Afghanistan.