Afghanistan peace talks should go on unless Taliban pull out: Abdullah

Abdullah Abdullah, the chief of Afghanistan's peace council said on Friday that talks with Taliban on political settlement should not be abandoned despite Taliban attacks unless the insurgents themselves pull out. The talks have been long-stalled.

“I think we shouldn’t shut the door unless it’s completely shut by the Taliban,” Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, told Reuters in an interview. “We can’t say no to talks despite a lack of progress or in spite of what’s happening on the ground.”

He spoke after he accompanied Afghan Prsident Ashraf Ghani as they met US President Joe Biden at White House. The talks remained focussed on US military and civilian aid and issues stemming from the departure of the last U.S. troops nearly 20 years after the U.S.-led invasion.

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Biden told Ghani and Abdullah that “Afghans are going to have to decide their future” and the “senseless violence has to stop.”

The fighting, however, has raised grave doubts about long-stalled US-backed peace negotiations between the insurgents and a delegation that includes government officials that began in Doha under the Trump administration in 2020.

Abdullah said there was “perhaps more optimism” about a peace deal when the negotiations began because “the Taliban said things to different interlocutors that created optimism.”

Still, Abdullah said, the talks should not be abandoned.

“Eventually, the last man killed will not be a solution,” he said. “There has to be a peaceful settlement.”

(With inputs from agencies)