Kabul: Afghanistan will be represented by one team at the talks with the Taliban despite President Ashraf Ghani’s standoff with election rival Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Russia Dr Mohammad Latif Bahand said in an interview, noting that the list of negotiators drafted by the government would include opposition forces.
Under the US-Taliban peace deal, signed on February 29, intra-Afghan talks were due to start on March 10. However, this did not happen due to disagreements over the issue of prisoner release, a precondition stipulated by the Taliban in the deal. The refusal of ex-chief executive Abdullah to concede his defeat to Ghani in the September election, meanwhile, gave rise to speculation that Afghanistan would not be able to present a unified team at the talks with the Taliban. On Sunday, the Afghan government said that it had prepared a delegation and promised to announce the exact date of the negotiations later.
“There are problems around elections in every country. But so far there have not been any signs – either from international organizations, or America, or the UN, or NATO – that, apart from the list of the government of Afghanistan, there will be a list from [President Ghani] contenders,” Bahand said.
He added that the list brought together “representatives of everyone,” including the opposition. According to the diplomat, these will be professional people with a good knowledge of their country and its interests.
The first group of these negotiators had already visited the Qatari capital of Doha, where the US and the Taliban struck their deal, and spent 10 days there, according to Bahand.
“There is no need for all countries in the world to know that they had met with someone. They returned to Kabul on March 12 and said that we would brief the presidential administration about their results and will continue working on conditions [for intra-Afghan talks],” he added.
“It can be said that the process began on the 12th,” the ambassador said, adding that it is impossible to predict when the talks would end but there were “no obstacles.”
Media, meanwhile, reported that the preliminary delegation had returned from Doha without meeting the Taliban. Instead, it held talks with US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad as well as Qatari, German and Indonesian officials.
Afghan Ambassador rules out 2 teams for talks with Taliban amid post-election row
