I S L A M A B A D — U. S . peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met with Pakistan’s military chief Tuesday, a day after discussing the lagging U.S.-Taliban peace deal in Afghanistan with the chief negotiator for the insurgent movement.
The meetings included Gen. Scott Miller, head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Statements from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and the U.S. military in Kabul, Afghanistan, said Washington was engaged in “ongoing efforts” to find a sustainable peace after decades of relentless war. But the U.S. officials released no details.
Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen said the insurgent group’s chief negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, used Monday’s meeting at the Taliban’s political office in Qatar to protest attacks against Taliban fighters in their homes, contrary to provisions of the Feb. 29 agreement.
“Our men have been targeted in their residential areas while there is no room for such attacks in the agreement, either by the U.S. or their internal [Afghan] supporters,” he said, a reference to Afghan National Security Forces.
The U.S. military has refused to address the Taliban’s specific complaint but has said that it is abiding by the agreement and will continue to go to the aid of the Afghan military.
At Tuesday’s meeting with Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistani military leaders reaffirmed their support for U.S. efforts and renewed their “commitment to act to advance a political settlement to the conflict,” according to a statement released by the U.S. Embassy in the Pakistani capital.
Shaheen said the Taliban are ready to negotiate a nationwide cease-fire but only during intra-Afghan negotiations, the next critical step of the deal. However, getting to intra-Afghan negotiations, which the U.S. had hoped would begin weeks earlier, has mostly been held up by political turmoil in Kabul as dueling politicians fight over who is the real winner in last year’s presidential elections and as the government squabbles over the deal’s call for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners and 1,000 government prisoners.