Taliban suspends peace talks with US
March 15th, 2012 - 9:29 pm ICT by IANS
Kabul, March 15 (IANS) The Afghan Taliban has suspended preliminary peace talks with the US, according to a statement released Thursday by the outfit.
“Islamic Emirate (the name of the ousted Taliban regime) has decided to suspend all talks with Americans taking place in Qatar from today onwards until the Americans clarify their stance on the issues concerned and until they show willingness in carrying out their promises instead of wasting time,” Xinhua quoted the statement as saying.
The Taliban, fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces in a decade-long insurgency, for the first time in January announced that it was involved in preliminary talks with the US, and a political office has been opened in Qatar in this regard.
The statement denied that the Afghan government was involved in the peace talks.
It said the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” has also demanded the release of its prisoners from the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay.
The Taliban in the statement said a memorandum of understanding which was agreed to earlier was not fulfilled because a US representative presented a list of conditions in his latest meeting with Taliban envoys that “were not only unacceptable but also in contradiction with the earlier agreed upon points”.
“The inauguration of political office in Qatar was not but for the sake of reaching an understanding with the outside world and particularly for the exchange of prisoners with the Americans in the initial stages,” the statement said.
“But it seems that the Americans and their stooge regime took advantage of these measures of Islamic Emirate and sought to achieve other malicious objectives and therefore are postponing the core issues and are wasting time,” it said.
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Tags: afghan government, afghan taliban, contradiction, core issues, guantanamo bay, inauguration, initial stages, insurgency, islamic emirate of afghanistan, kabul, memorandum of understanding, peace talks, prisoners, qatar, sake, taliban, taliban regime, wasting time, willingness, xinhua