Washington, Sep. 8 (PTI): President Donald Trump has cancelled a “secret” summit with Taliban leaders and his Afghan counterpart after the insurgent group claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in Kabul that killed an American soldier and 11 others, dealing a body blow to protracted negotiations that were nearing a peace deal to end America’s longest war.
In a series of tweets on Saturday, Trump disclosed that he was to meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and senior Taliban leaders on Sunday at his Camp David retreat.
But he cancelled the meeting after the Taliban admitted it was behind a suicide car bomb attack Thursday that had killed an American soldier and 11 others in the capital of Kabul.
“Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight, Trump tweeted.
Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to.. .an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations, Trump said.
“What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they... ..only made it worse! he said.
Trump’s move comes after nine rounds of talks between the US and Taliban representatives, held in Doha, the capital of the Gulf state of Qatar.
Trump’s US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad had announced a peace deal “in principle” with the Taliban on Monday.
As part of the proposed deal, the US would withdraw 5,400 troops from Afghanistan within 20 weeks. However Khalilzad said final approval still rested with Trump.
The US currently has about 14,000 troops in the country.
If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway,” Trump said.
“How many more decades are they willing to fight? questioned Trump.
Inviting Taliban leaders onto American soil was an unprecedented move and a significant development in America’s longest running war just days from the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, CNN said.
It’s not clear if Trump’s abrupt announcement will impact the peace process to end more than 18 years of war in Afghanistan.
Trump’s announcement came as the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan Saturday called for a politically negotiated settlement of the conflict in Afghanistan as they hoped for an early start of dialogue in the war-torn country for complete cessation of violence.
Afghanistan’s President Ghani had been outspoken in his criticism of the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, who have refused to negotiate with his government.
Khalilzad arrived in Kabul last week, after a final negotiating session with the Taliban, to brief Ghani’s government on the terms of the agreement. Those terms included the withdrawal of more than 5,000 US troops - more than one-third of the total in Afghanistan - in exchange for the Taliban agreeing to sever ties with al-Qaeda and to continue its fight against the Islamic State.
The deal also included a Taliban commitment to begin inter-Afghan talks with the Ghani government, expected to start within weeks. The talks themselves would include discussion of a cease-fire.
Trump’s move may come as a major set back to the Pakistani leadership which is heavily banking on the peace negotiations with the Taliban to use this as a leverage with the Americans on a host of issues.
The Taliban said the US “will be harmed more than anyone” but left the door open for future negotiations Sunday after President Donald Trump abruptly announced that he had called off year-long talks to end America’s longest war.
“We still... believe that the American side will come back to this position... Our fight for the past 18 years should have proven to the Americans that we will not be satisfied until we witness the complete end of the occupation,” the group said in a statement released on Twitter by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
The statement said the insurgents had “finalised” a deal with the US that had been expected to allow Washington to begin withdrawing troops in exchange for security promises from the Taliban.
It added that both sides had been preparing for the deal to be announced and signed when Trump tweeted late Saturday that he had “called off peace negotiations”.
Trump had cited a Taliban attack in Kabul on Thursday which killed 12 people including a US soldier as his reason for calling off the talks, including a secret meeting with the insurgents at Camp David in Maryland planned for this weekend.
But the Taliban dismissed his reasoning in their statement, saying it showed “neither experience nor patience”, and accused the US of killing “hundreds of Afghans” in the fighting.
“Americans will be harmed more than any other,” by Trump’s decision, the statement said, adding that the US’s “credibility will be harmed, their anti-peace stance will become more visible to the world, their casualties and financial losses will increase, and the US role in international political interaction will be discredited even further.”
