Some political parties in Afghanistan on Monday welcomed efforts by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan’s Reconciliation, to bring about peace in the country, saying Khalilzad has assured politicians there will be a breakthrough in building peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Khalilzad meanwhile listened to the views and recommendations of political parties for brokering peace with the Taliban, said the political parties.
On Monday, the office of the First Vice President General Abdul Rashid Dostum announced that in his meeting with Khalilzad on Sunday, Dostum urged that the team negotiating with the Taliban must be made up of a neutral group of people who are influential.
On the first leg of his regional visit, Khalilzad on Sunday met with top Afghan officials including President Ashraf Ghani and other political figures. He also met with the Chief Executive of Jamiat-e-Islami Afghanistan Atta Mohammad Noor and Dostum.
During his meeting with Ghani, Khalilzad briefed the president on his schedule for the next week, which will see him visit a number of countries in the region.
“In the meeting, discussions were held on the structure of the peace process where we need neutral personalities and influential Afghan figures to be part of this structure,” said Dostum’s aide Bashir Ahmad Tayyanj.
According to reports, Khalilzad assured officials of Washington’s strong commitment to bringing about peace in the country.
“He (Khalilzad) is both an Afghan and an American. He knows both the Taliban and the Afghan government and he is well aware of people’s pain,” said senate chief Fazel Hadi Muslimyar.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin's special envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said that Russia has interests in Afghanistan and that the Taliban has the right to put their demands on the table.
He said that the west has been defeated in Afghanistan and they should now focus on diplomacy.
“The US had seventeen years to implement its plans. There were no Taliban in 2001, but now the Taliban have control of over 60 percent of Afghanistan. What kind of presence is this that they failed to resolve the problem and instead increased them,” said Kaboluv.
This comes after the Moscow summit on Afghanistan’s peace was held on Friday in Russia. Representatives of the Taliban and envoys from 11 countries including the United States attended the meeting.
A delegation from Afghanistan’s High Peace Council (HPC) also attended the summit.
While inaugurating the meeting, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he hoped the Moscow summit would provide the ground for direct talks between Kabul and the Taliban.
Lavrov said Afghanistan should not become a competition field between powerful countries once again.
He said Daesh, with the support of foreign countries, wants to find a footprint in Afghanistan and from there expand its activities to the Central Asia and further. Lavrov said the countries that attended the Moscow meeting want to help Afghanistan eradicate such a threat.
But Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, a Taliban representative who attended the meeting on Friday said any talks for them are divided into two categories – first with the US and secondly with Afghanistan.
He said the group would first discuss issues concerning the US with the Americans and reiterated that their main demand was the withdrawal of foreign troops.
Speaking to reporters in Moscow Stanikzai said: “Our demand for the peace process has two parts, the first part is with Americans; all those matters which are related to Americans like the withdrawal of their forces, the black list and officially recognizing our political office (in Qatar) and other issues which are related to the Americans; they should be discussed with the Americans; they should be discussed with America on the table.”
The Afghan government did not send a delegation but representatives from Afghanistan’s High Peace Council (HPC) did attend.
A splinter faction of the Taliban, led by Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, meanwhile said on Sunday the recent Moscow meeting on peace in Afghanistan was a “lie”.
But officials from Afghanistan High Peace Council (HPC) said Friday’s Moscow meeting was an important platform towards building peace in Afghanistan and that the peace facilitating body is optimistic about starting direct talks with the Taliban.
“Response to Taliban’s demand about the withdraw of US must be a positive response. However this withdraw should take place in what manner and what should be stages of this withdraw, these are the next issues,” said former Taliban commander Sayed Akbar Agha.
Khalilzad, will travel to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar with an interagency delegation from November 8–20, the US Department of State said in a statement.