Taliban, Afghans to hold fresh round of peace talks next week in China

ISLAMABAD — A fresh round of intra-Afghan peace talks will be held in China next week, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said Tuesday, raising hopes for renewed negotiations, even as violence surges in Afghanistan’s 18-year war.

The talks planned for Monday and Tuesday will be the first meeting between Taliban and prominent Afghans from Kabul since a July round of talks held in Doha, the capital of the Middle Eastern state of Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department said its peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, started a fresh round of talks with European, NATO and U.N. allies about ending the war.

Khalilzad will later meet with Russian and Chinese representatives “to discuss shared interests in seeing the war in Afghanistan come to an end,” the State Department said.

For nearly a year, Khalilzad led the first direct U.S. talks with the Taliban. However, in September, just as a deal seemed imminent, President Donald Trump declared the deal dead after a series of attacks in the Afghan capital killed more than a dozen people, including a U.S. soldier.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who made his first visit to Afghanistan last weekend, told reporters traveling with him that he believes the U.S. can reduce its force in Afghanistan to 8,600 without hurting the counterterrorism fight against al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

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