SUNDAY TIMES WEB DESK: Earlier, Russia’s news agency had quoted a Taliban official at peace talks in Moscow as saying that Washington had promised to pull out half of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of April.
But that report was contradicted at the end of the talks in Moscow, with the Taliban official previously quoted by news agency, Abdul Salam Hanafi, denying that he had made the comment.
He said there was no detailed agreement with the U.S. chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad who has been meeting separately with Taliban negotiators. “Until now we did not agree,” the Taliban official said.
On an April withdrawal, he said: “It’s our desire. It is our demand … Our demand is withdrawing of foreign forces as soon as possible.”
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, among the Afghan opposition politicians attending the talks, said the principle issue under discussion was that Afghanistan should be free of foreign forces.
He said there was a near-consensus in the talks on this subject. “It was very satisfactory,” said Karzai.
Afghanistan’s government was absent from the talks, because the Taliban does not recognize its legitimacy and refuses to sit down with it at the negotiating table. The government in Kabul said the talks were not in Afghanistan’s best interest.