US, Taliban scramble to rewrite withdrawal draft
ISLAMABAD - Taliban and negotiators from the United States are scrambling to rewrite a draft agreement that will outline the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan and a verifiable Taliban guarantee to fight terrorism ahead of an all-Afghan peace conference on Sunday.
Officials familiar with the talks, but not authorized to speak about them, said negotiations went late into the night on Wednesday and were to resume again on Thursday - the sixth day of direct talks between the insurgents and US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad.
Suhail Shaheen, spokesman for the Taliban's political office in Qatar, earlier said that a draft agreement was being rewritten to include agreed-upon clauses. The two sides apparently remain divided on the withdrawal timetable, with the US seeking more time.
Taliban officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the US was seeking up to 18 months to complete a troop withdrawal even as US President Donald Trump told Fox News earlier this week that a withdrawal had already quietly begun and that troop strength had been cut to 9,000. The president's statement has since been contradicted by a senior US official, who said the force strength is unchanged at about 14,000.
Still, Trump's statements reinforced the president's often stated desire to leave Afghanistan and end Washington's 18-year war - the longest in the history of the US.
His eagerness to pull out has strengthened the position of the Taliban, who control half the country and won a key concession in the planning of the peace gathering, which will include no official delegation from the Afghan government.
But pressure to reach an agreement was underlined on Monday when the Taliban claimed a truck bomb attack in Kabul that killed or wounded scores of civilians, many of them children.
Agencies
(China Daily 07/05/2019 page11)