KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)– Afghanistan’s president said Sunday that he will not free countless Taliban prisoners ahead of all-Afghan power-sharing talks set for next week, openly disagreeing with a timetable for a fast detainee release laid out simply a day earlier in a U.S.-Taliban peace contract.
President Ashraf Ghani’s remarks pointed to the first hitch in carrying out the fragile deal, which is targeted at ending America’s longest war after more than 18 years and getting rival Afghan factions to settle on their country’s future.
Still, the U.S. has actually said a planned U.S. troop withdrawal over the next 14 months is connected to the Taliban’s counter-terrorism efficiency, not to progress in intra-Afghan talks.
Washington’s Peace Envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as America’s first ambassador to Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion, spent the past 17 months running on-again, off-again talks with the Taliban to hammer out the contract.
The U.S.-Taliban offer signed Saturday in the Middle Eastern State of Qatar envisions the release of up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners by the Afghan federal government ahead of talks in between Afghan f