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The US Special Representative for Reconciliation in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, held a new round of marathon talks with Taliban officials based in Qatar to press for a politically negotiated settlement of the 17-year war.
Khalilzad's three-day meeting with the Islamist insurgency ended on Friday and both sides were "optimistic about the process of dialogue," several Taliban sources said on Saturday.
However, neither side has officially confirmed or released details of this week's talks in Doha, the Gulf nation's capital, home to the so-called "political bureau" of the Afghan Taliban.
This was Khalilzad's second interaction with the Taliban in over a month. The Trump administration appointed him to the office in September with the goal of bringing the Afghan government and insurgent group to the negotiating table.
Insurgent sources said former prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay US Detention Center, Mullah Fazal and Mullah Khairkhaw, have also joined the Taliban delegation for talks with the US team.
The Taliban said their process of dialogue with Washington aimed to establish a timetable for the withdrawal of all US and NATO troops from Afghanistan in order to pave the way for an intra-state dialogue. Afghan.
"When we reach a solution for the withdrawal of all their forces, we begin a second phase (of discussions) between Afghans (themselves) on how to restore peace and form a government in Afghanistan," said Sohail. Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman. Qatar office, told reporters in Moscow last week.
Shaheen was in the Russian capital in a five-member Taliban delegation, which for the first time attended an international conference organized by Russia to discuss peace efforts in Afghanistan.
In meetings with the United States, the insurgent group also called for the release of its prisoners and the lifting of international travel restrictions imposed on Taliban leaders.
After last month's meetings with Afghan officials and Taliban representatives, Khalilzad called on both parties to establish their respective teams for peace talks.
Since then, the Taliban have inducted into their "political bureau" in Doha five senior insurgent leaders, who were traded for the freedom of a US hostage in 2014. The United States released the men from their detention center from Guantanamo to the authorities of Qatar, in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only US soldier taken prisoner by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
For his part, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani met with leaders and representatives of Afghan political parties, as well as with civil society organizations, for the creation of Afghans. an "advisory board and a negotiating team".
Ghani's office said on Saturday that the meetings would continue for several days and that the government was determined to begin a peace process based on a national consensus.
The president said that "the road to peace is fraught with difficulties and we must be ready to use all the tools available to achieve a positive result".
Addressing this week via video link to an audience in Washington, the Afghan president has shown optimism about prospects for peace talks. Responding to internal criticism that the United States had not placed Kabul in confidence before starting talks with the Taliban, Ghani stressed that many of the ideas and projects Khalilzad is discussing with the Taliban are actually from the Afghan government.
"The US commitment (with the Taliban) is to ensure that negotiations with the Taliban do not lead to Taliban negotiations but to direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban," Ghani said.
The president said his government was ready to tackle all the issues on the negotiating table in an attempt to end the deadly war in Afghanistan. He revealed in his speech that since 2015, his government's security forces have lost more than 28,500 people in the Taliban battle, but Ghani has denied that insurgents are in a winning position on the battlefield.
A senior Afghan peace negotiator who met Khalilzad on his recent trip told reporters in Kabul that the US envoy had six months to give a result to the US administration.
Khalilzad's office has made no comment on these claims or any engagement with the Taliban.
