Taliban not serious about peace: Afghan chief executive

Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah says the Taliban militant group is not serious in peace talks aimed at ending hostilities in the war-inflicted country.

Abdullah on Wednesday questioned the militant group’s sincerity and said the Taliban had so far shown no intention to seriously engage in the negotiations despite US efforts to push a fresh peace process.

“Recently there are renewed efforts in terms of the international community and especially the US,” Abdullah said in an interview with AFP in Paris. “We are not judging it too prematurely, but I would say that our experience as of now has been that they (the Taliban) have not shown any intention to get seriously engaged in the peace negotiations.”

This is while Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had said earlier this month that it was “not a question of if, but when” an agreement would be reached with the militant group.

The US’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, also raised the possibility of a breakthrough before April 20, 2019, the date set for presidential elections in Afghanistan.

But Taliban leaders said on Monday that they had failed to reach any agreement with the US after three days of talks at their political headquarters in Qatar, citing dissatisfaction with a deadline set by Washington’s Afghanistan envoy to end the war.

SS