Trump conditionally approves a peace deal with Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan — More than 18 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan, President Donald Trump has conditionally approved a peace deal with the Taliban that would withdraw the last American troops from the country, potentially beginning the end of America’s longest war, according to Afghan and American officials.

But the deal will only be signed if the Taliban prove their commitment to a durable reduction of violence over a test period of about seven days later this month. If the Taliban do end hostilities and a deal is signed, the United States would then begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops, and direct negotiations would start between the Taliban and Afghan leaders over the future of their country.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo informed Afghanistan’s top leaders in separate phone calls Tuesday that Trump had given tentative approval to this approach, according to a senior Afghan official briefed on one of the calls.

A senior U.S. official also confirmed that Trump had given his preliminary approval for a deal Monday, dependent on a cessation of violence, the same day he visited Dover Air Force Base to receive the remains of the latest U.S. fatalities in the war.

A senior diplomat in Washington described the deal as “95 percent agreed to in principle.”

The two sides were on verge of a similar deal last September. Trump suddenly called off the talks, citing a Taliban attack that killed an American and NATO soldier and nearly a dozen Afghans. But officials said it was largely because Trump’s grand gesture of inviting the Taliban to Camp David fell apart.

After that, it took months of trust-building work, including a prisoner swap, to get back to the negotiating table.

The deal’s details — including the timeline of the troop withdrawal and how much of the agreement had changed since the two sides were on verge of a signing last September — remained tightly guarded.

“This is a welcoming development and I am pleased that our principal position on peace thus far has begun to yield fruitful results,” President Ashraf Ghani said in a statement . “Our primary objective is to end the senseless bloodshed.”