By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan
April 8, 2019
Afghanistan will send a government delegation for talks with the Taliban in Qatar, in a potential breakthrough in efforts to end the nearly 18-year war, even as the militants said participants will attend the meeting only in a “personal capacity.”
U.S. and Taliban negotiators have held several rounds of talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, but the militant group has refused to talk directly with the Kabul government which it sees as a U.S. “puppet.”
Omar Daudzai, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s peace envoy, said on April 7 that a government delegation would go to Doha to “exchange views with the Taliban.”
Daudzai said the government would finalize the delegates by April 10, with the talks scheduled for April 14-15.
The Taliban said in a April 7 statement that those attending the Doha talks will not be representing the government and will only “participate in a personal capacity.”
The statement also said that the participants would not engage in peace negotiations, but “will only be clarifying their views and policies and sharing their stance with others.”
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy seeking a peace deal with the Taliban, said in a statement late on April 7 that “representatives of the Afghan government and wider society will participate” in an intra-Afghan dialogue in Doha next week.
Khalilzad has spent most of the past week in Afghanistan as part of an ongoing push for a peace deal.
He had previously said there were indications that the Taliban could sit down with government representatives in a “multiparty format.”
Although the Taliban has not held direct talks with the government, it did meet powerful opposition politicians in Moscow in February.
Some of the prominent Afghan figures that took part in the Moscow talks are expected to be part of the government delegation in Qatar.
With reporting by AFP
Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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