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Zalmay Khalilzad was the architect of the US-Taliban agreement for the withdrawal of US troops concluded in 2020 (File).
Washington:
Taliban and Kabul government far apart in US-backed talks to bring peace to Afghanistan, insurgents demanding “lion’s share of power” in any new government, US special envoy said on Tuesday .
Veteran Afghan-born US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad’s grim assessment of the peace process coincides with Taliban advances in provincial capitals that uprooted tens of thousands of civilians as US troop withdrawal nears end after 20 years of war.
“At this point they (the Taliban) demand that they take the lion’s share of power in the next government given the military situation as they see it,” Khalilzad told the Aspen Security Forum. during an online conference.
The deadlocked negotiations in Doha were the subject of a phone call Tuesday between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who agree on the need to speed up talks, said the US State Department.
Blinken and Ghani also “condemned the ongoing Taliban attacks and the displacement of the civilian population,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
The Taliban’s rapid advances have fueled fears that the insurgents are aiming to forcibly reestablish their tough form of Islamist rule ended by the US-led invasion in 2001, including a crackdown on women and independent media.
The insurgents say they want a peace deal.
Price told reporters that the insurgents would become “international pariahs” if they gave up their engagement in the negotiations “and the concern of all of us, one of many concerns, is that the result will be a civil war. “.
A car bomb explosion followed by sporadic gunfire hit Kabul on Tuesday near the heavily fortified “green zone”, killing three civilians and three assailants.
Khalilzad was the architect of the US-Taliban agreement for the withdrawal of US troops concluded in February 2020.
In his rare public assessment of the Doha talks started as part of the deal, Khalilzad said peace can only be achieved through a ceasefire and negotiations that would establish a transitional government.
Ghani’s administration said the talks should focus on “integrating the Taliban into the current government,” he said.
The Taliban claim that Ghani’s government “is the result of military occupation” and they want an agreement on a transitional government and constitution, Khalilzad continued.
“They are distant from each other,” he said. “They try to affect each other’s calculation and conditions by what they do on the battlefield.”
Khalilzad said 40 years of continuous conflict “no longer has legitimacy”.
“It is a struggle for the balance of power, the distribution of power between the different factions, and no Afghan, especially civilian Afghans, should die because of it,” he added. which risked angering the US-backed Ghani government.
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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